


Best Foot Forward

by cyan96, kkachis



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Homophobia, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-03-07 00:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13422396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyan96/pseuds/cyan96, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkachis/pseuds/kkachis
Summary: Lance is a ballet dancer with big dreams. Keith is an extraordinary musician — his lack of inspiration notwithstanding. In which they don’t fight crime but instead studio inspectors, their internal angst, and occasionally each other.“So uh, you’ve a plan?” Lance asks.“I know someone who’s definitely got the skill to do the score, and catch up to the point we’re at,” Shiro promises. His gaze flickers down for a moment, to the phone, before he glances back up. His grin is a little rueful at Lance’s expectant look. “He’s a bit — well no, scratch that — he’s really stubborn, and I’ll need to pull some strings to get him here, but he’s free and it’ll be good for him.”“Sweet! Anyone I know?”“I doubt it — although. Have you ever met my little brother?”





	1. Act I, Scene I: Introduction

 

"And _promenade!”_

Shiro's voice rings around the mirrored walls of the studio. Lance blinks, warm afternoon sunlight stinging at his eyes from where it streams through the huge windows. The Tim Hortons across the street squats solidly underneath its red overhang, and Lance forces himself out of his two-hour pining for chicken wrap to focus. The drill is a routine one, though. He could actually do this in his sleep. He dips his torso and tosses one leg into the air, twists round in sync with the other dancers to the beat of the tinny Mozart coming from Shiro’s shitty, ancient speakers.

Lance doesn’t want to be a complainer, but the music is kinda harshing his flow. The sound quality isn’t great, first of all, but they’re also supposed to be practicing to an actual pianist. It’s weird: they held the auditions for the pianist for the production of _Swan Lake_ a while ago. They were supposed to actually show up for rehearsals instead of being conspicuously absent. Learn the particulars of one-another’s style and all that. Yet the guy’s been a no-show for two weeks. What gives?

A firm hand suddenly nudges Lance’s leg. “…and relevé second, up high, relevé — that’s a little too wide, Lance, ferme les jambes,” Shiro says in his ear. Lance yelps (a very manly yelp!) and lands, catching himself awkwardly. He pouts crossly in Shiro’s direction.

“A little warning before you breathe down my neck, maybe? Jesus!” he huffs, embarrassed.

Plaxum’s familiar laugh bubbles up from his left. “Pay attention, Lance,” she admonishes. “I know you crave that chicken wrap, but it’ll all be over soon.” He rolls his eyes at her good-natured teasing and gets back to finishing rehearsal. Thank God it’s the off season; it means there’s more time for him to eat and chill tonight. He zeroes back in on his posture — swings his leg out more, corrects his back, drapes his arm _just_ so — _there._ He zones out, taken by the constant, minute adjustments to his form, and before he knows it the clock is pointing at 4:20 and where did the music go and why is everyone packing up, _what._

Shiro taps him on the shoulder. This time he does _not_ startle, thank you very much. “End of the day, Lance. Pack up.”

“Oh. Yeah, thanks dude.” Lance blinks, re-orients himself, and then staggers to his blue duffle bag. Sitting down and chugging some water from his bag, he waves goodbye to the other dancers. He playfully blows a kiss to Plaxum, who does so back in turn with a saucy wink, and promptly dissolves into giggles as she walks out the doors.

Soon, it’s just him and Shiro packing up.

Shiro shuffles a pile of his papers. He has his messenger bag at his feet and he’s flipping through a dense block of a binder in one hand. Lance is pretty sure all of Shiro’s things are organized with military precision. He’s just sliding a pen out of his pocket when the doors open, and an assistant pops his head into the room, phone in hand.

“Mr. Shirogane! Mr. Shirogane! There’s a call for you!” he says. “It’s the pianist you were arranging for… Swan Lake?”

Lance turns. “What?”

Shiro pauses and sets his things down. Taking the phone with a quiet, “Thank you, Klaizap,” he answers, “Takashi Shirogane speaking from the Palais des Léons. How can I help you?”

A muffled voice gurgles from the other end of the line. Lance catches static, more tone than actual words, and it doesn’t sound like good news. The crease between Shiro’s eyebrows deepens and he turns, angling his body away from Lance.

“Excuse me. Do you mean to say…”

More muffled voices. The line of Shiro’s shoulders draws tight.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that, sir.” Shiro’s voice had gone hard, an edge pressing close to the surface. “I was under the impression that this performance had been booked since the beginning of August.”

Yeah. Definitely bad news.

“I assure you that we were not informed of this when we booked this performance,” Shiro says flatly into the phone. “In fact, I believe that we were put down as a ‘priority performance’ by your team.”

The muffled voice rises in pitch, indignant sounding.

“Well, I beseech you; inform Mr. Rolo that his behaviour regarding this performance has been less than professional.”

Then, there’s a crackle. For half a second Lance can nearly hear words, a man’s low voice gone wheedling and high, like he’s trying to override whatever Shiro’s about to say before he can say it. That doesn’t happen. Shiro’s eyes narrow sharply, his lips press into a thin hard line and he says, icicle-sharp, “The Palais des Léons regrets this partnership. Thank you for your time.” He presses the end-call button like he’s squashing a bug.

Shiro tosses the phone back to the staff guy — Lance is sure the guy’s name is hidden somewhere in his memory, collecting fungus, but he’s too busy trying to telepathically communicate _what was that_ to look for it. The guy nearly drops his clipboard, fumbles for the phone, and catches it.

Shiro blinks. “Oh, sorry Klaizap. I’m just…” He inhales slowly.

Lance can count the number of time’s Shiro’s lost his temper on… half a finger. He asks Shiro, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Shiro bites his lip. “The pianist can’t make it for the Swan Lake production. We’ve already gone through all the other candidates, and now we’re at zero.” He rubs his temples with his fingers and swears under his breath. “Shit.”

Swan Lake. Yeah, _shit._

Lance isn’t Shiro. He’s not the one in charge of dancers. Not the one that all the stress and the eventual pre-show necessities are going to pile onto like a rockfall in the middle of −40 degree blizzard weather. He’s a dancer, that’s his part, and holy shit, would Lance like to _get this part._ Swan Lake is one of the bigger productions the studio is putting together this year, and Lance wants it, wants it to be his debut, feverently and feverishly and in a way that makes his hands clammy and his stomach swoop. If he ever wants to get past second soloist rank, which is a recent promotion at that, he has to prove himself. Prove that he’s good enough.

And maybe Lance has always been a romantic at heart, dreaming about playing Prince Siegfried since he was twelve and imagining his career in the break in between classes. Hey, it’s an _iconic role,_ okay? It’s not like he wouldn’t jump at the chance to do other parts. Like Benno, or Wolfgang; anyone prominent. Being a background character is a phase that every ballerina needs to hold sometime in their career, but Lance wants _distinction._

They don’t need a pianist, technically, to do the auditions. That’s not on Lance.

They _do_ need a pianist for the actual performance. That’s kinda the biggest alteration to this season’s interpretation of Swan Lake; it’s full of complex piano solos, set to represent the Prince throughout the story. Changing the music and shifting themselves out of the rigid box of “same old, same old,” sacrificing tradition for originality. But if the pianist can’t make it, then they’re boned. Screwed. Their plans are FUBAR, because there’s only a scant six-odd months left, and the score is _huge._ Time isn’t a thing they can afford to let drip away. They’d need some kind of musical prodigy to deal with the demand they’re looking at now.

Shiro is staring with laser focus out the windows, spine stiff and shoulders an unbending line. Lance can actually feel the stress from where he’s sitting. Like, second-hand anxiety? Sort of.

Shiro paces. Lance would really like to say something — words of comfort, a “hey don’t worry about it man, it’ll be fine,” but the look on Shiro’s face is honestly terrifying. Eyes narrowed, the lines of his face hard. Anger is cold on him, and it’s not a cloak Lance sees often draped around Shiro’s shoulders. Lance opens his mouth, and then closes it. He watches Shiro pace the perimeter of the studio like a caged tiger.

He’s at the window facing the street when he stops and digs through his bag again, takes out a black folder, and flicks through it, brows furrowed in concentration.

“Uh… Shiro?”

And then suddenly Shiro’s grinning.

The transformation is abrupt enough that it makes Lance jump. The expression on Shiro’s face isn’t relieved so much as deeply pleased — and kind of crazy cheerful — in a way that reminds Lance of one of those huskies that got the steak and the frisbee and a belly-rub all in the same hour. He draws his phone from his pocket and swipes a thumb across the touch-screen.

“So uh, you’ve a plan?” Lance asks.

“I know someone who’s definitely got the skill to do the score, _and_ catch up to the point we’re at,” Shiro promises. His gaze flickers down for a moment, to the phone, before he glances back up and his grin turns a little rueful at Lance’s expectant look. “He’s a bit — well no, scratch that — he’s _really_ stubborn, and I’ll need to pull some strings to get him here, but he’s free and it’ll be good for him.”

“Sweet! Anyone I know?”

“I doubt it — although. Have you ever met my little brother?”

Lance stares at him. “You have a little brother?”

“Mhmm.”

“…Seriously?” And Lance has never heard of this before? How?

“They don’t appear out of nowhere, Lance,” Shiro says, dry and amused. He arches one eyebrow, attention half focused on scrolling through whatever it is he’s still trying to find on his phone. Lance makes a face back at him that’s like the lovechild of a scowl and a pout.

“No, like, I’ve known you for years and this is is completely new knowledge. _Since when?”_

“Since years,” says Shiro unrepentantly, explaining exactly nothing. Because he’s a terrible person.

“Can I have a name?” Lance tries.

“You’ll meet him soon enough,” says Shiro.

Well, two can play this game. Lance crosses his arms, half zipped duffle bag sprawled in his lap, and gets ready to launch into his specialty of thirty rapid-fire questions, but before he can get a word out edgewise, there’s an awkward cough. His attention is diverted to the side… to where Klaizap is looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“Uh… if you have a solution, sir, I can draw up the paperwork and assist you.”

Shiro blinks. “Oh. Yes. Thank you, that would be appreciated.”

Klaizap nods, still looking uncomfortable but determined. He spins on his heel and trots back out the doors, scribbling furiously on his clipboard as they swing shut behind them.

There’s a pregnant pause. Lance stares at the slow fall of the glass doors; Shiro does too, because apparently Lance isn’t the only one who had completely forgotten that Klaizap existed.

Oops.

“…Well then.” Shiro turns back. The tension’s evaporated from his shoulders. “We’ve got everything under control now. Head to physio and go home, you’ve got a long day ahead of you.”

Lance determinedly pretends he’s not trying to sneak a look at Shiro’s phone screen. It’s set on “contacts,” but the lettering is tilted away at an awkward angle so that Lance can see exactly zilch.

Fine. But he’ll find the truth one day.

“Alright,” he says, temporarily defeated. He hauls himself up to his feet and hollers out a “See you later, Shiro!” accompanied by a wave as he walks out. Shiro grins at him, and Lance shoots him a finger pistol back. He exits the studio, out the double doors of the front, onto the cracked sidewalk and into the crisp November air.

* * *

Lance’s apartment is somewhere in between the edge of Victoria Park and Scarborough, where the ridiculous housing prices that plague the inner city back off just enough for two twenty-somethings to nab a place together. It’s not a bad location. There’s a bus stop three minutes down the street. A plaza. That awesome pizza place where the owner allows Lance to steal five extra servings of garlic dip every time he orders. The apartment itself is kind of ugly, but hey, what can you do. Lance breezes into the lobby, up to the fifteenth floor, and jiggles his keys into the unhappily tricky lock until he hears the click.

Hollering out a joyous “I’m home!”, Lance sets down his heavy blue duffel and shucks off his battered sneakers. He rolls his right ankle — much better after going to physio and getting it stretched out, but old injuries are old injuries — to be greeted by… nothing.

The lights are on. Lance squints.

“Hunk? Bro?”

A sound rumbles from inside, and it sounds kind of like Hunk but it also sounds like the toaster when it’s in the middle of a malfunction. It’s coming from the direction of the couch.

Lance peers around the little hallway that leads into the living room and looks harder, past the coffee table with its overflowing piles of folders and randomly scattered mugs of stagnant coffee, past the too tall lamp that needs to be adjusted, at the couch. There’s a heap of thick comforters and squashy pillows there. It moves, like every horror story of giant bug infestations ever. One dark hand trails out from under an angry cat print pillow.

“Oh boy. Hunky, buddy, my man,” he says as he pads inside over their cheap blue-yellow-pattern Ikea rug, “what’s got you so down?”

“I am suffering,” Hunk muffles. “Engineering is suffering, why did I decided to major in it. Oh my God.”

Lance sits in front of the couch, knees up, a hand on Hunk’s blanket-covered shoulder. “Is Professor Prorok giving you shit again?”

“Oh God, you don’t even know. _So much shit._ I feel like I’ve — like I’m going to somehow find the insides of my eyelids tattooed with formulas through sheer osmosis. _Twelve essays,”_ Hunk moans.

Lance crab-shuffles towards Hunk’s front. “C’mere, big guy. You can do it. I believe in you.”

“I don’t.”

“This isn’t a democracy. My vote counts more,” Lance informs him.

Hunk rolls over. His cheek smushes against the side of the couch, and he blinks up at Lance with zombie eyes and dark greasy hair. His headband had migrated around his neck instead of his head. At least he’s not trying to drown himself in the sketchy cushions anymore; Lance will take it as a victory. “Down with the aristocracy, then.”

“Eat the rich?”

“Voregeosie.”

“Hunk, _no.”_

That earns him a weak chuckle.

Lance smiles, then pokes Hunk’s cheek. “Do you want me to make dinner or order food? If you say that you’re cooking tonight, I will strangle you in blankets before you can try.”

Here is a fact of life: the only things Lance can cook are instant noodles, sandwiches, and microwavable pizza. Also pasta. Sometimes.

Hunk _hmms_ into the covers. He flaps a hand vaguely in Lance’s direction. “If you have something with warm broth I’ll have it. I need it to warm up my cold, dead soul. Necromancy may be in order. Also, for the love of God, do not try anything new. We don’t need another fire alarm incident.”

Lance nods very seriously. “I’ll make ramen noodles, and I’ll also order from the congee place. They do deliveries, right?”

“Congee,” says Hunk, with dreamy longing.

“Ramen and congee it is.”

Lance swipes open his phone, dialing. Big as it is, the couch isn’t quite long enough for both of them. Lance perches on an arm and crosses his feet somewhere over where a blanket obscures Hunk’s hip. Or maybe that’s a leg. Or a possible textbook. It makes a good footrest, whatever it is.

Five o’clock sunlight tumbles through from the little balcony, painting chunks of buttery yellow on the walls and scuffed flooring and chaotic mess of objects stuffed on second hand bookshelves — the result of being home base for an engineering student and a hoarder. Weird, painted statues and beach rocks litter half a tiny table. Five stacked chairs of no particular value or similarity knock gently against it. Every two feet one of Hunk’s engineering textbooks lie scattered, dog-eared, highlighted, scribbled upon. The metal wiring of gutted projects are pushed to the back corner.

He might miss his family dearly, but he’s made a good home here with his best friend.

Lance phones, rattles off a quick order — seafood congee, duck congee, a side dish of vegetables, because Hunk has opinions about Healthy Eating and Lance has a diet plan — and the lady on the other side of the phone cheerily informs him it will be delivered within half an hour. He stuffs his phone back into his back pocket and then does a twist sideways that lands him on top of Hunk.

“Urk,” Hunk wheezes.

“Ow,” Lance says pitifully. That is definitely a textbook. His knee will never forgive him.

With the movement range of a beached whale, Hunk makes an effort to dislodge. Lance clings on like an extremely salty barnacle, and waits the two seconds it takes for Hunk to give up. “Why. Agh. I’m already dying here.”

“We can die together,” Lance promises.

“Your elbow is in my kidney,” Hunk says sadly. “I think.”

So _that’s_ what that is. Lance shuffles, says, “Oh. Oops. Sorry,” and removes the offending elbow.

They lie there and blink blankly up at the ceiling. Well, Hunk blinks blankly at the ceiling, still mummified in his state of sleep deprivation and essay-terror. Lance finds himself engaged in a staring contest with the angry cat pillow, face to face with flat-eyed judgement. He’s pretty sure he’s losing.

“So how was your day?” Hunk finally rasps.

Lance rolls over, stretches out his legs. There's an unopened ginger-ale can half hidden on the side table he reaches for. He cracks the tab and swigs; carbonated sweetness hits his tongue. “Okay? I think. Zoned out a bit during practice. The end was kinda — have you ever seen Shiro mad?”

This is apparently enough for Hunk to scrounge together the effort to move more than an inch in a sitting. “You got _Shiro_ mad?”

“What?” Lance squawks. “No! You have no faith in me. Apparently the pianist for Swan Lake ditched and he had to find a new one — totally un-Lance related incident — and okay, check this out, did you know that Shiro has a little brother?”

“…He has a little brother?”

“That’s _exactly_ what I said.”

Hunk blinks twice. “Wow. That’s — okay.”

“He's being all sneaky and refuses to tell me anything about it too,” Lance informs him, and promptly launches into an extrapolation of the afternoon’s events, beginning with the phone call.

He’s just describing Shiro ice-fine rage — “and seriously dude, you will not believe how scary that was, I never want to see that again—” when the doorbell rings. Congee delivery. Lance scrambles up and uses the couch as a springboard to launch himself forward towards the door.

When he pays, tips the bright-haired delivery guy, and then gets back, Hunk has finally migrated up to a bleary-eyed, shoulder slumped sit. Lance clears a spot on the coffee table for the food. He puts down the plastic bag, pries out two hot styrofoam containers, handing the first one to Hunk — duck — and keeps the seafood for himself. One lone container sits on the table. Vegetables. Lance pulls up its plastic cover, watching the warm steam waft.

Lance waves at it grandiosely. “Dinner’s served.”

“Ramen,” says Hunk around a mouthful of congee.

“Yeah, yeah, big guy, I’ll get to that.” Right now, his attention is zeroed in on one thing: the hot broth. Lance blows on it, waits the allotted three seconds, and then sticks it into his mouth. “Ow.”

Hunk snickers; Lance pouts at his congee. But it’s a good day, so he lets it go. He has hot delicious food in front of him, and the blankets are warm, and the sunlight splashes prettily onto the walls and floor. The apartment smells of weighty soup and his best friend has finally moved enough so Lance has a proper seat on the couch. Outside, the sun sets low.

* * *

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Keith launches into his improvisation, starting loud with big, bold syncopated chords moving down the scale, mellowing into singular notes tinkling across the keyboard. And then the arpeggios take over, sending Keith’s fingers flying from left to right on the span of black and white keys. Reaching the high notes, he rests on a few soft, poignant chords before diving back into the fray of the piece.

This is it. The rush and lull of jazz; unrestricted, alternating, spontaneous, free. If classical were a battalion of soldiers marching rank and file, jazz is weaving across the black and white like nimble space fighter through an asteroid field. Anything goes — underappreciated chords, crazy syncopation, random spats of tremolo and sforzando dazzled throughout. Playing classical is Keith following a map as carefully as someone of his level of impulsivity possibly could. Playing jazz was just… Keith. Excitement and pride, sometimes pensiveness and frustration; all laid bare, spilling from his heart and into the keys.

The lights are flashing. Pinpricks of blue and green and purple spin constellations across the walls, refracting against dark glass and cutting shards on the dance floor. Out from the edges of Keith’s perception he can make out moving bodies and bold fabrics — the flare of a yellow skirt, a particularly shimmering top. Their steps match the tempo in dizzying quick spins and sharp footwork.

Keith kicks the volume up a notch. Goes faster, _harder._ The music pounds through his bones and his skull and his fingers, a vibration that he can feel jump sharply at the back of his teeth. Adrenaline mixes with hyperfocus to spark a thrill down his spine. People are dancing, and the lights are flashing, and the music is a wardrum pound in his head. The faster they go the harder he plays and the harder he plays the faster they go.

And Keith plays _hard._

He doesn’t look at the clock. He goes through two more songs, quick and jittering and back-breaking in their speed, leaving only a minute break between each for the dancers to rebalance themselves. He wipes off the sweat beading on his brow, stretches his hands a bit, breathes slow and hard to calm down.

Someone on the floor hollers for a slow dance. Someone else laughs. Keith rolls his eyes, but the next improvisation is slower, quieter, a lull instead of a tide. Gentle and small chords, close together, pedal-echo and petal-soft.

The song finishes. A hand taps his shoulder. Keith’s fingers on the keys smash down into something like a drowning cat.

“Oh, _geez,”_ says Nyma.

He squints up aggressively, through the dizzying lights. Nyma’s long blonde hair and reflective purple sunglasses stare back down at him. She flicks a perfectly manicured hand at the clock at the wall, bangles jingling at her wrists.

“Shift’s over, pretty-boy. It’s my turn now.”

He grunts. Looks at the clock. She’s right.

Ugh.

Without saying a word, he gathers his things and steps off the stage, heading towards the back door.

The moving crowd of people has dispersed a little, first with the slow dance and next with the DJ change, slowly migrating towards the bar in the space between songs. It’s easy for him to go through. The door is already ajar, letting in the cold night air. Keith pushes it open the full way and steps into a back alley.

The door shuts. Inside the music has restarted and he can hear the muffled tune of Nyma’s singing through the walls. He breathes in, breathes out.

His shoulders slump.

The music is gone. It feels like the moment he walked out that door someone took an ice-cream scoop and scraped out the space between his lungs and his stomach. He feels emptied out, like a bottle poured down the sink. There had just been something about the energy and the people and the flashing lights that came together in an electric shock, and it’d jolted down his spine like a metal rod conducting lightning — one glorious hour of the music and movement crowding out the blank space in his chest — but now he’s outside again, and the air is cold and the streetlights are blocking out the stars. He’s grounded again. Asphalt under his feet. Jacket over his shoulders. Cold air nipping at his cheeks and fingers.

Also, the dumpster next to him smells like shit.

He shakes off the thoughts. If he has an existential crisis while driving at night on his motorcycle, he’s going to buy himself an express ticket to the afterlife, and that trip is one-way only.

Kickstand put in, helmet and gloves on. He swings a leg over the seat of his cherry red motorcycle and starts the ignition. It purrs smoothly to life as he rolls out of the alley and onto the streets, making him whoop a little as the wind passes by. Evening this late into the year means _dark_ and _cold,_ the temperature plummeting. Long shadows streak across the road and the sidewalk, the moon a pinky-wide dime suspended in the sky. Neon lights from neighboring clubs illuminate the world in artificial yellow-orange. Keith’s lips are dry and he can feel his breath coming out in short moist puffs.

But it’s good, nonetheless. All of this is good, the wind through his hair and the smooth glide of wheels on concrete, hands tight on the handlebars of his motorcycle. Headlights flash in front of him and behind him, red and white and yellow and glowing, light on metal and concrete and glass, a liquid river as he zips past. Some of the chill bites through the high collar of his jacket; Keith barely notices it.

Driving has always felt great. His bike is the best birthday gift he’d ever gotten. It’s practically his baby.

He passes familiar spaces. The old rundown building with its barbed wire fence. Construction projects in the works, yellow cranes settling down for the night. The Eaton Centre, glittering and massive, and the thousand stores around the downtown core. The lights dim as he swings east towards his neighborhood.

Going back home from The Blade is practically muscle memory, with how many times Keith has done it. He glides down the curve of his street, taking a sharp left. The houses blur by. He counts them as he passes: 158, 166, 180, a mess of squat houses, apartments, and insomniac-hour lights.

He stops at the one with chipped paint and a bit of scraggly lawn — because neither Keith nor his roommates make it a habit to actually mow it. The lights from the top floor are on, but the ones from the kitchen are shut dark. Keith parks his motorcycle and locks it firmly in the garage. Opens the door. Makes a beeline to his room at the end of the hallway, grimly avoiding his roommates.

Thankfully, it doesn’t seem any of the first-floor residents are back.

He slams his door shut, locks it, and breathes a sigh of relief.

Bed sweet bed.

Shoes, take them off. The sheets are made — he remembered this morning. They smell of lemon and cheap fabric softener, because he also remembered laundry this week, or at least, Takashi did, and egged him until he did it. Keith tumbles into them face first, rolls onto his back, fishes for his headphones and their comforting weight on his ears.

The ceiling is charcoal. He hasn’t turned the lights on, and the walls are dark and grey. Moonlight shafts through the small window on the opposite wall. Keith breathes in, breathes out. Tangles his fingers into the fabric of his duvet.

Lately, his life has just been feeling… listless. Even when he jams his heart out, his music feels empty and drained. It’s fun, of course: one thing Keith knows is how to breathe energy into jazz, that’s the easy part. But there’s no substance to it. None of his melodies stick with him. They drift away, like blank, flimsy pieces of paper he can use only once before they are carried off by the wind. It’s stupid. All this is just stupid. He’s trying but he can’t. He just  _ can’t, _ the staticky gnarl of his thoughts is tangling his brain into steel wool and barbwire — 

Stop.

Breathe in, breathe out.

He just — It’s not working. He doesn’t even have the faintest fucking clue of what to do with his life. The high school counselor once told him he was pretty much wasted talent. In a much politer way, of course, but the sentiment still remained. After getting kicked out of the prestigious Garrison Academy of the Arts, his life’s course derailed and hit a brick wall. He hasn’t even thought about college in three years. All that’s left from his secondary school days is a mess of relatively random credits, sky-high marks, a diploma from the shittiest high school in existence, and a disciplinary list a mile long. Even back then he hadn’t shit himself into thinking he was going anywhere special.

Scratch that: anywhere at all.

He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing anymore.

His depressing train of thought is interrupted by the insistent chiming of his phone. Keith blinks out of his reverie and gropes for it on habit before the ringtone fully registers, and then he considers hanging up. 

He almost does. He doesn’t want to face Takashi right now. But his brother is a persistent guy. He’s only going to keep calling.

After the fifth ring, Keith finally swipes to pick up. “Hey, Takashi,” he mutters into the receiver. “What do you want?”

“Wow. I’m really feeling the sibling affection here. Hi, Takashi. How was your day, Takashi. Why it was great, Takashi.” There's a smile in his voice; Keith knows he’s just kidding, so he doesn’t take it to heart.

“How was your day, Takashi,” Keith deadpans. It’s not really a question.

Takashi’s answering tone is beatific. “Absolutely fucking terrible.”

“What.”

“Horrible. Atrocious. Heinous.  _ Hideous—” _

Keith yanks the phone away from his ear. “I get it. I get it!”

“It really was,” Takashi says solemnly. Despite the fact that Keith’s the younger one of the two, Takashi’s the one who gets the illustrious title of “Biggest Little Shit of the Century.”

“As you’ve said,” Keith says between eye-rolls, “I can hear, Takashi.”

Takashi barrels right on as if Keith has said exactly nothing, the dickhead. “But I have a saving grace, or rather, an excellent idea, that will light up my day, that’ll make it all better—” and he’s using the voice Keith  _ knows _ he reserves for drunk-calling at five-am in the morning and then pretending nothing ever happened.

“I’m not going to like this, aren’t I.”

“You’re not even giving me a _ chance.” _ He stretches out the last word with relish. Keith lugged Takashi’s couch and his thirty boxes of textbooks up to his new apartment three months ago, while Takashi took gleeful pictures. He should’ve just dropped them on Takashi’s foot. Oops. Totally accidental. Bye.

“I can hear it _in your tone.”_

_ “Keith.” _

“Yeah, just like that.”

He can feel the puppy eyes over fifty miles of signal. “C’mon, give your big brother  _ a _ chance. One!  _ Keeeeeeeef,” _ Takashi wheedles. Keith is simultaneously incredibly grateful and incredibly salty about the fact that nobody else has to suffer through Takashi’s shiteater side like he does. Except maybe Matt.

“You’re not going anywhere if you’re going to keep using that goddamn nickname. Unless you want me to bring back  _ Sephora.” _

“Urk.”

“Se. Pho. Ra.”

“I let you borrow my eyeliner, and this is how you repay me? Betrayed.”

_ “Sephoragane,” _ Keith says, with vicious satisfaction. Oh, how the tables turn.

“Keith, this is bullying. Do you want me to call Mom? Because you’re bullying me.”

Keith’s grip on the phone goes tight. 

_ “No.” _

There’s a pause from the other side of the line.

He can feel his heartrate pick up. What had all those shitty counsellors said about temper management? Right, breathing exercises. Counting exercises. He licks the hard edge of his teeth. 

Breathe in. Out. Slowly. 

It doesn’t help.

Fucking breathing. 

Because it’s dark. And the light casts shadow on the ceiling, beige faded, eerie, straggling strips. And the room is too small. And the duvet under his shoulders too soft. And Takashi is fifty miles away and Keith wants him right here, by his side, his comfortable shadow and familiar smile and his unending empathy, and at the same time Keith wants Shiro to be as far from Keith as possible, on the other side of the globe, across fucking borders of reality — another reality, another time, another winter night with ghost lights and black ice and —  _ shut up, shut up, shut up. You’re ruining things again. Shut up. _

He stops, breathes, refocuses.

“You’re okay,” says Takashi, a quiet crackle of static. A solid mountain of calm. Always Takashi, reassuring Keith, when it should be the other way around.

Keith closes his eyes and scowls at the black insides. “Of course I am, Bakashi.” 

The silence is cold.

Then:

“>:(,” says Takashi.

It takes a moment to process that. “What the  _ fuck,” _ Keith says.

“That was—”

“Your kicked puppy noise, I know, my God.  _ Bakashi.” _ He says Takashi’s name like there’s a universe hidden inside. A universe given only to stupid older brothers.

“You’re not allowed to angst on me,” Takashi informs him.

“Oh shut up.”

“No,” says Takashi, firmer, almost serious, and Keith has 1.2 seconds of sobering up before his brother’s voice goes sing-song gleeful again. “Remember about what I said about you being my saving graaaaaaaace?”

“Fuck.”

“Language, Keef.”

_ “Fuck.” _

“I have a very important task that must be done,” Takashi barrels on, “and all my knights in shining armour have decided I wasn’t worth the effort of rescue, so who else can I turn on but my perfect, wonderful, can-never-fail me baby bro—”

“Cut to the chase, man, it’s kind of late. What do you need me for?”

It had better not be another couch. Keith would probably do it eventually and anyways, with tired muscles and much cursing up the five flights of stairs, because this is Takashi, but he would really rather it not be another couch.

“Well,” Takasih says lightly, “I’ve another piano gig for you.”

He doesn’t need —

It’s not charity. It’s not charity, because this is Takashi, and he actually cares about Keith. He’s known pity for a long time and that’s not a thing Takashi does.

He needs the money, anyway, and he doesn’t exactly have much to do except stay in his shared home with its constantly-changing entourage of noisy roommates. He likes to try and make sure he doesn’t stay down here for too long. There’s a word for what happens if he does, and it’s “festering.”

“It’s with the ballet company I work at, actually,” continues Takashi. “The pianist who we were originally going to choose had to back out because of scheduling conflicts. You get to play for a full ballet score, but you also play during practice sessions. It’ll pay well for you and keep you occupied. Sound good?”

“Which ballet?” Keith asks.

There’s a pause, a skip beat of hesitation, and then Takashi says, “Well, I know you’re not going to like this, but  _ Swan Lake.” _

Tchaikovsky can throw himself off a fucking cliff. 

“Takashi,” Keith starts.

“Keith,” Shiro finishes.

_ “Tchaikovsky? Really?” _

He can hear Shiro click his tongue from over the receiver. “Yes, Tchaikovsky, really. Come on, baby bro, you can’t just hate a composer in general. I know I know, bad memories — but that’s in the past. And you might meet new people! Make a few friends. Influence people.  _ Start your own ninja organization.” _

This is what Keith has to put up with. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Matt.”

“We had a lot of catching up to do,” Takashi says serenely. “Isn’t it great?”

“No.”

“Don’t worry, I know your true feelings. So, the gig?”

The lure of money for a young adult who has to put up with Toronto-level prices is a strong one indeed. He still needs cash for food and bills, and he’d really, really like to save up enough to get an apartment of his own instead of sharing with a bunch of strangers. And maybe force-feeding himself Tchaikovsky will help nudge his piano skills along.

Keith considers his mental schedule for the next few months.

…Fuck this. “Okay.”

It’s like the sun shining through a winter storm. “Great! I’ll drop by tomorrow with the details and music. Cheeseburgers or cheesecake?”

“Cheeseburger,” Keith says automatically, brain to mouth filter vanished. He catches himself. “Takashi, you don’t have to—”

“I’ll get five,” says Takashi swiftly. He pauses, and asks in the voice Keith has dubbed “suspicious and trying to cajole out information in the most soothing way possible,” “You’re eating, right?”

“Takashi.”

“And rent? You’re good? You have to tell me if you’re short anything.”

“I’m fine—”

“If things get rough, Mom and Dad always—” 

_ “Takashi. Stop.” _

“…”

Keith tells himself to count to five. It’s not fair to get angry at Takashi. “Sorry. Just. I’m fine, I’ve been eating at least two meals a day, rent is cheap here, I’m not going to die of malnutrition any time soon. I’m used to this.”

“You don’t have to be,” Takashi says quietly. Stubbornly. He believes it with the same conviction people do with facts: fire is hot and water is wet and tomorrow the sun will rise.

“It’s fine. I’m fine, you stupid older brother. Stop mother-henning me.”

A beat passes. Takashi is quiet; Keith can hear him breathing, steady and even and strong. Unlike Keith though, emotional intelligence is actually one of Takashi’s strong points. He lets it go. “…Alright then. Just take care of yourself. I’ll drop by tomorrow with the music for you. See you in two weeks, little bro?

“…See you in two weeks.”

The end tone sounds as Keith sets his phone down on his nightstand. He rolls over and presses his face into his pillow. Maybe that snap decision to do a gig for — what, four to five months? that’s how long a production usually takes, right? — wasn’t such a great idea. But Takashi had asked, and he’d been so damn happy when Keith agreed, and it’s an excuse to make sure he doesn’t stay grounded in his small, shitty room with its tiny upright piano pushed up against the wall —

Whatever. It’s not like he has anything to do otherwise.

Keith falls asleep, alone in his room, and doesn’t dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cyan: Hey guys! Welcome to this new project, which has been a seriously long ways coming. Me and Kkachi -- and a lot of other people -- actually, have been working on and off on Best Foot Forward project January last year. Sadly, due to real life and scheduling issues it’s, er, been a very slow journey. At this point in time Kkachi and I have just given up our previous goal of finishing the entire thing prior to posting: we’ll put up what we have.
> 
> kkachi: this shit’s been a loooooooong time coming and we’re really happy to finally see it fly! unfortunately, we’re in need of people to beta our work, because the two of us are definitely guilty of run-on sentences and other writerly sins.
> 
> Cyan: Many writerly sins.
> 
> kkachi: whenever we reread our work we die inside.
> 
> Cyan: Yes. But sometimes we reread after a long time not seeing the story and we marvel at our own brilliance. A heads up: updates are going to be slow. There are a lot of school related things that need to be done, which means less time for writing. On the bright side, the average chapter length is going to be long.
> 
> kkachi: please leave a comment if you’re interested in being our beta!
> 
> Cyan: Leave a comment even if you aren’t! Comments are a writer’s blood, kudos our oxygen. Tell us what you liked and what you didn’t.
> 
> kkachi: thank you for reading best foot forward, and we hope to see you again soon!
> 
> kkachi’s tumblr: kkachis.tumblr.com  
> Cyan’s tumblr: cyancoffeecakes.tumblr.com


	2. Act I, Scene II: Scène

“Shit!”

The coffee pitstop _might_ have been a mistake. Which… no, coffee is never a mistake, but the lineup and the fifteen minutes waiting in it had _definitely_ been one. Lance sees the bus slowly but surely ambling down the lane, a good fifty-something metres of morning rush hour ahead of him. Eyeballing it from here, he has maybe thirty seconds to bypass the sea of people or he’ll be thirty _minutes_ late to morning practice, and he is _not_ going to be chewed out for tardiness. Just — nope. There is nothing worse than watching Team Dad staring down at him with the patent “Lance-I-know-you’re-better-than-this” disappointment first thing in the morning.

Which means it’s time to recklessly risk his life across the lanes of downtown traffic.

He takes a deep breath, clutches his precious coffee cargo in one hand and his duffel bag in the other, vaults over the protective rail between the road and the street, and books it through the bike lane. His blue windbreaker flaps around like a demented bird. He takes a sharp turn around an ill-placed garbage can — _shit shit shit_ — and nearly smashes into a morning cyclist, but manages to stumble out of the way just in time.

“Sorry!” he hollers, as the cyclist swears violently at him before pedalling away. He turns back around and sees the bus lurching its way through the lanes. T-minus eight, seven, six —

Lance makes a mad dash across the street, ignoring the bright red DO NOT CROSS signal across the road. At least five pissed off Torontonians honk their horns as he darts through and barely manages to catch up to the bus. Somehow, his Presto card rises up from the recesses of his duffel. He taps the card against the machine and scrabbles for a handhold on the top rail — thank goodness for his long limbs — and blows out a steady sigh.

That was a close call. Waaaaaaaay too close.

The bus lurches under his feet; Lance’s grip tightens on the rail, and then to the sound of tires smashing asphalt they start to move. He taps his foot impatiently, fiddling with the straps of his duffel bag. Outside the windows, the cacophony of the city rushes by in a blur of industrial grey. As the bus ambles towards the lakeshore, he spots the beginnings of a snowfall dance around the motes of morning sunlight.

The bus stops with a jerk and a sound like hissing steam, startling him into reality. Lance elbows his way through the throng, giving hasty, distracted “excuse me”s and “sorry man”s and “holy crap”s as he wriggles towards the back doors. He hits the sidewalk at full sprint, fishing his phone out of his pocket and checking the lockscreen. Shoot. He’s late. He’s already _late._ He is going to be faced with Shiro’s Disappointed Dad Stare™, and that is _not_ going to fun. At all.

The familiar buildings of the lakeshore whiz by: artisan pizza shop, Tim Hortons, rooftop gardens, clothing boutique — there’s a three minute walk to the studio and Lance is going to shorten that to thirty seconds, just watch him go suckers. Shiro has a thing when it comes to appointments, and that means that every second past the deadline counts. He’s already going for broke. If Lance is going to be late, it’s going to be by five minutes, tops.

He can see Shiro’s car parked near the front doors, glinting silver in the early morning light. The duffel bag jars his ribs. Up ahead, flanked by two towering stone lions, the glass doors of the studio loom. Lance lunges for them. He has no hands, coffee in the right, bag in the left — someone either needs to make all-you-can-store dimension pockets real (yet another thing to mention to Pidge) or more hands. Extra appendages. Whatever you call them. Lance would love more hands.

In lieu of extra appendages, he rams the doors open and dashes inside. Go down this hallway, up the stairs, crisp white walls and the occasional painting, all mountains and rivers and colourful European towns after the rain. He takes a sharp right, almost to the change rooms — wait, who in the fuck —

Red jacket. Dark hair. Something like a scowl on a pretty face. The shittiest mullet Lance has ever seen in his life, what the hell —

He then proceeds to smash into the guy with all the finesse of a stampeding rhino.

“What the—”

Lance watches, horrified, as his beautiful, life-saving coffee spills all across the front of the guy’s jacket. And his shirt. And his pants. And his papers.

“Fuck,” is the first thing out of Lance’s mouth. “Shit shit shit I am _so_ sorry I think I have napkins somewhere in here—” He can see the liquid trailing down, seeping in. It’s like that one horror movie his sister dared him to watch with her when he was fourteen. Blood everywhere. Except now it’s coffee. “Look man, I am so sorry. Really. Absolutely. Just.” He digs into his bag. “Napkins!”

The other guy looks like he couldn't give half a shit about the napkins. He looks _pissed._ “Dude. What the _hell?_ How about you watch where you’re going?” he says viciously.

Aaaaaaaand, that’s one way to start off a terrible morning. Wow. Fan-fucking-tastic. Pissy prettyboy with the most atrocious haircut he’s seen in his life really tops off the whole “desperately-late-to-practice” thing. Lance’s patience has dissipated entirely.

“Hey, sor _-ry,_ I’m late for practice and I’ve just been having a pretty shitty morning. Lay off a bit,” he snaps back. Hey, he _tried_ to be nice but Lance is just not going to deal with a dickhead like that and he needs to get to the change room ten minutes ago. He shoves a couple of napkins at the stranger, now dubbed Asshole Who Needs a Haircut, and then ignores him entirely in favour of the change room.

Tossing the sad, empty carcass of his coffee into the garbage can outside, Lance sprints in. A couple of late stragglers are filing out, but they’re not going to be late to class — he is, though. He speeds through the motions of shucking off his shoes, changing into his comfortable athletic wear, and pulling on his favorite blue legwarmer onto his right leg. He ties his ballet shoes on neatly and rushes out.

The studio is all wide-open architecture. It’s outfitted with huge floor-to-ceiling windows and mirrors, walls a shade of white that makes it feel enchanting, pale wood flooring stretching from one end to the other. And also Shiro, who’s pretty much a fixture as constant as the piano in the corner or the barres set up all around the open space.

Lance grins at him, all teeth. “Hey Shiro—” he cocks double finger guns at him — “your eyeliner looks pretty _en pointe_ today.”

Shiro gives him a distinctly unimpressed look.

“Lance. You’re late. Again.”

Busted. Someone snickers off to his side. Lance makes a mental note of the voice for a future quest for revenge.

“Hahahaha. Well. Yeah.” He runs his fingers through his hair subconsciously — nervous habits, nervous habits. “Sorry. About that. Had some problems with our good ol’ pal Tim Hortons this morning.”

If anything, Shiro’s gaze becomes even flatter. The eyebrows reach higher, sky high, atmostronomically high, and wow, Lance is going to get it now. “Did you use the one next to here, or next to your place?”

Lance looks at him very seriously. Lance can and has sacrificed a lot for coffee, mainly because he has tastebuds, and enjoys not being a zombie once afternoon hits. “The one here doesn’t do it right. I tell you every time, there’s something fishy about the coffee here.”

Shiro sighs.

The lecture is coming, Lance can tell. Shiro opens his mouth, and Lance braces himself, but the impending tirade is interrupted by a metallic screech.

The side door — which nobody ever comes through — slowly creaks open on its rusted hinges. Somebody really needs to oil that thing. A mop of black hair shows up through the opening, followed by a distinctive red jacket.

Wait one damn minute.

Oh no. Fuck his life with a goddamn cactus, it’s the guy from the hallway. Lance recognizes him explicitly, and with a good amount of irritation thrown in. Asian. Hair like a damn trainwreck. Hunched shoulders. Possibly emulating a delinquent. There’s a dark stain across his front that Lance suspects is a ratio of maybe one part coffee to two parts washroom tap water.

He turns back to Shiro.

“Oh, it’s _that_ guy. What’s he doing here?”

Shiro blinks, and his mouth curls up just a notch, a wry smile. “You two have already met?”

Lance thinks about coffee and Mr. Asshole over there and the terrible morning he’s had. He’s not sure “met” is the word.

“This guy crashed into me in the halls and spilled his coffee all over me,” mutters Asshole. “Does that count?”

“Well fuck you too,” says Lance.

Someone — the same person who was snickering earlier — descends to full blown laughter. Lance can see Plaxum hide her mouth behind her hand. Traitor.

“Well,” Shiro says, slowly.

He’s definitely amused now. His eyebrows have that tilt to them. He’s probably _laughing_ inside.

Lance allows himself a good hard sulk for a second — seriously, this is not cool — covers it up with totally justifiable indignation, and laser focuses back to Asshole. It’s just in time to see Shiro crook a finger in Asshole’s direction. For a moment Asshole just kind of stares and doesn’t move, but then his shoulders draw tight and up, and he walks over in a way that looks distinctly uncomfortable and also makes Lance want to barf.

He stops a good meter away from Shiro and the rest of the dance group, hovers for a moment like he isn’t sure what to do next, and then proceeds to scowl fiercely at the floor.

Shiro rolls his eyes.

“Keith,” he says, pointedly.

Asshole’s gaze goes up. To Shiro. Who is looking at him with The Look, capital letters, that Lance associates with the corralling of the cub class whenever they dare each other to do handstands on the barres. Also on Lance, whenever he — well, that part is irrelevant, okay? Point is, this guy is being herded like a sheep.

Somehow, Asshole’s scowl manages to turn up a notch. This time it’s directed at Shiro, who doesn’t blink an eye. Grudgingly, he takes two steps forwards. Stops. Measures distance. Takes another step. Until he’s nearly side-by-side with Shiro.

Who neatly swings an arm over Asshole’s shoulders and heaves him closer.

“Mrggh,” says Asshole.

“This is my younger brother Keith,” says Shiro beatifically.

 _“Takashi,”_ says Asshole.

But Lance doesn’t process this, because he’s in the middle of a the mental equivalent of an Error 404. It’s just — poof. Lights out, boys. Blue screen of death. Lance.exe has stopped working and Windows can’t find a solution to the problem. Have you checked your network settings?

“Nice hair,” says Plaxum approvingly, and that’s what ultimately snaps Lance back to reality.

He swerves to look at her, betrayed. For the second time today. But this is a bigger betrayal. _“No._ Not nice hair. What are you talking about, that’s a _mullet,_ Plax. It should be illegal to have one of those outside of the 80’s.”

“I can hear you,” says Asshole, hackles raised and a snarl in his voice. _This_ is Shiro’s brother?

Apparently though, Lance is not the only one being betrayed today. “Lance isn’t wrong,” says Shiro. “You do need a haircut.” And then he ruffles Asshole’s hair. Asshole puts up with it with an aura of ancient practice and the explicit undertone of “if we weren’t in a public place I would be stepping on your foot _so hard.”_

“Can we get to the point, Takashi?” Asshole grits out.

“Yeah, okay.” One more hair ruffle, and then Shiro loosens the hand from Asshole’s shoulder, steps into business mode. “This is the idea. Everybody, Keith will be accompanying you on piano for our performance of Swan Lake. He’ll also be playing in the orchestra on the days of the performance, so get used to him being here. He’s going to be practicing the score as you practice the dance, so you get a close simulation of the actual performance music while he gets the time to learn the music.”

“What,” says Lance.

His neurons clearly aren’t firing correctly today, because, of course. Shiro’s younger brother. The emergency pianist. The guy he accidentally spilled coffee on. The guy who probably hates his guts now.

The guy he’s going to spend the next six months with almost every day of the week.

Fuck.

* * *

This was such a terrible idea.

Takashi is talking. That’s familiar. Firm tone, strong voice. He moves his hands as he goes through the explanations — Keith, you can see the piano there, dancers, line up and introduce yourselves — and the metal of his prosthetic gilts gold in the early morning light. The problem is that nothing else is familiar. The studio is clean in sharp, white lines. There’s a skylight. The room stretches with the pale wood; mirrors make it seem bigger than it actually is. Keith remembers his breathing exercises — in and out — his counting exercises — to ten, Yu, you can do it. Even combined he still can’t escape the nauseating feeling of being cramped into a very small box.

He would take the box, actually. His room is basically that. He would take his room any day over this.

All eyes are on him (new kid, weird kid, per usual) even as he does his absolute best to not look anyone in the eye. He’d thought it would be okay. Sort of. For one optimistic hour while still hounded by sleep, in that time lapse of morning traffic, after Takashi had called at a bleary seven a.m. and told him,  _ “practice will start at nine, eat a big breakfast Keith,” _ he thought that maybe this wouldn’t be a disaster.

That was all before he’d entered the studio doors. The white walls. Expensive looking décor. This is Takashi’s kind of place, not Keith’s, and he knows it.

The stale muffin he’d grabbed and downed sits heavy in his stomach. Also, the wet patch on his shirt is soaking his skin, which is uncomfortable in a different way. Keith doesn’t usually care about what he looks like, but he actually wanted to make a not-too-shitty first impression for once. 

He also wants to punch blue-leotard coffee guy in the face, because that’s been ingrained reflex since he was twelve and being picked on — his hair is  _ fine, _ dammit — but he’s not twelve anymore. He’s twenty years old, that should not be his go-to solution to his problems. Consequences for his actions and all that. 

As he shuffles his way to the piano, he passes by the dickhead in question. Lance stares at him while he casually chats with another dancer. Keith’s sides prickle and anxiety gurgles in his stomach in thick, slimy bubbles that squelch up his throat. Somehow, he makes it to the piano bench, and there he finally relaxes: nobody can stare at him while hidden away behind the baby grand.

He does a quick A-flat major scale, up and down, unknotting his tension. Do a bit of chromatic, make it meet in the middle, E major in big cascading octaves, some quick arpeggios up and down. It’s easy as breathing, and it turns out the room has some killer acoustics. That’s a luxury he doesn’t have the privilege of having at home.

Continuing his warm up, he plays a couple quick Mozart exercises, a few snippets from Bach, and — just for fun — a couple blues chords. The towering walls and probing eyes disappear under the music. 

“Keith,” Takashi calls, “Act I, No. 1,  _ Scène?” _

He obeys, drawing out a slow and mournful introduction, ushering in notes until they grow and reach a smooth peak. Down, quieter and lower, like cellos and horns tasting at softer notes, louder, louder, faster,  _ bang! _ Loud, cacophonous, big and grand minor chords, sole melody lying against the bass, until the wave subsides again and the tide pulls in quiet. He licks his lips and looks up as he reaches the vivacious middle section, loud and sprinkled with sugar-rush fast decorations.

Takashi is in his element here. His back is to the windows and his arms are crossed, observing the dancers with a critical eye and giving out careful, measured tips. The prosthetic gleams. Keith finds his eyes drawn to it like light to a black hole, inescapable inevitability despite the way he usually tries to ignore its existence. It’s — a pretty thing. Objectively. Aesthetically, Keith knows it is, in the same way that he also knows how it could have been so much worse.

Takashi signals for the next song.

It’s a relief. Keith plays. 

The dancers are good. They’re doing warm ups, graceful, full body stretches in front of the mirrors so that any incorrect posture can be noted and fixed. Basic ones first, the ones Keith recognizes from long afternoons spent loitering at Takashi’s practices. Then some not so basic ones. The woman with blue-dyed hair goes down backwards, one leg rising, until her hands are round her ankle, body folded like a piece of paper in half. It looks like it should hurt a lot, but her face is perfectly serene. Takashi compliments her form before moving on.

Keith turns his attention back to  _ Valse, _ with its loping notes and sudden bursts of starburst energy among its petal-delicate sections. He transitions. The next part is wilder, peppered with lightning-fast scales among brassy tones, but shortly after he swoops back down to the thoughtful quiet. Make it stronger, more victorious — back down to the quiet again, this time oscillating the beat to match the flow, one-two-three one-two-three, dark like a bite of bitter chocolate. Almost at the end, now  — he opens to a crescendo like sunrise being born, and back again, until he brings it up to a loud wrap full of resonance and daytime gold. Cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders, he flips his score and looks up —

Jerks back.

The dickhead —  _ Lance _ — is staring at him.

He’s managing it while in the middle of another kind of terrifying pose  — arms flat on the floor up until his elbows, when his body goes vertical, then down again, folding at the knees with his toes dangling an unmoving inch from his head. His mouth is set in a hard, thin line that doesn’t look very happy.

Reflexively, Keith scowls back. Fine. So he doesn’t like Keith. Like that’s a novelty. The morning crash was his fault anyway. Run, smash, and barely an apology, and even Keith knows that that’s bad manners. Feeling indignant, he yanks his focus back to the piano. He doesn’t have improv and he hates Tchaikovsky but he’s good at venting frustration through music, no matter what genre. It’s old hat by now.

He plays. The tune sounds less coordinated, fractured instead clear. There’s clarity but no cohesion. He shakes his head and brings himself back to the music, but he can’t shake the sick feeling of Lance’s eyes on him.

Breathe in, breathe out. Patience yields focus.

He had a counsellor once. Tenth grade. One of the better ones, not school-issued but one the Shiroganes had specially been recommended, always dressed in knitted jumpers and polished loafers, with silver streaked in the temple of his dark hair and what seemed like endless, iron patience. Visual memory exercises — that had been his recommendation, four weeks in while Keith had hunched scowling in the chair, mulishly silent.

It’s helped, before, when the breathing and counting didn’t, even though he’s kind of shit at visualising. Keith hasn’t tried it since the accident.

It’s usually too much effort, but — Takashi. 

He thinks of the Blade.

Clubs aren’t Keith usual crowd, but it can be argued that nothing is. They’re familiar, though. Familiar enough to be comfortable. He closes his eyes and tries to remember the dim lights and the dizzying flashes, all movement, nothing like the pristine order of Takashi’s studio, the beat of the rhythm a vibration through his bones. Here and now was classical. Not jazz improv. That’s alright; there are always a few people who want to go traditional. 

Classical music is a lot like ballet in some senses. Endless practice to hone your accuracy to a sharp edge, until your performance looked effortless in its grace and beauty. He used to practice with Shiro, improvs on both their parts; the music on Keith’s and the dance on Takashi’s. Classical and ballet go hand-in-hand.

Keith’s practiced this piece. He has it memorised. The feel-sense was all the same: keys at his fingers, pedal at his feet, the hard bench he’s sitting on.

Breathe in, breathe out. Takashi’s swapped out Lance’s group for another set of dancers. Keith glances at the clock. It’s only been fifteen minutes since warm-ups started, and he has another hour left to go before he can scurry back to the privacy of his room.

He blows out a steady breath.  _ These are gonna be a long six months, aren’t they? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cyan: Hello and welcome back to Best Foot Forward! Chapter two introduced a bunch of exciting developments.
> 
> kkachi: like our wonderful idiot boys finally meeting in an equally idiotic way. Oh Boy Do We Love Clichés.
> 
> Cyan: We do. Very much.
> 
> kkachi: in any case, this is a pretty short chapter. next one’s going to be a little more meaty in terms of content and length.
> 
> Cyan: Yes it will. Now, onto other important matters. Despite having two of us for this project, Kkachi and I are watching the waters very hopefully for any betas that might be able to help us. We don’t have a lot of time because of real life and school, so any additional help will be a great boon!
> 
> kkachi: we have some people who can help tide us over, but it’s not permanent and they are very busy! regardless, i want to give a shoutout to bluecarrotcake (@neatos-cheetos) for betaing chapter 2! if you’re into bnha or haikyuu, i highly suggest you take a look at her stuff!
> 
> Cyan: Thanks for reading, and tell us what you enjoyed on your way out guys!


	3. Act I, Scene III: Marche

_The thing that pisses me off,_ Lance muses over a powerful jeté, _is that Mullethead is_ annoyingly _good at piano._

Lance isn’t an expert on music by any stretch of the imagination, but dancing and music kind of go hand in hand, and he’s been in this business long enough to know quality. And Keith isn’t just quality; he’s _excellent._ From the moment Lance heard the first notes of his warm-ups, he couldn’t stop staring. The sound — it was like someone plucked a string in the space between his lungs, vibrato on a high C sharp, ringing in his ears. Indescribably talented.

 _So why on earth does he have to be such a weird, antisocial asshole?_ Lance grouses, twisting into an arabesque.

Among the list of various observations Lance has made about the rare _mulletus dickheadius_ in the wild over the past few days:

  1. The guy barely talks to anyone. Introversion is fine, but Keith somehow manages to make himself into a complete hermit despite being confined to a studio room with at least twenty people at a time. And he’s always _scowling._ At least when Lance is looking at him.
  2. Every day, without fail, he manages to sequester himself in his corner, the baby grand blocking him from scary things like “interacting with the lesser beings” or “saying good morning.” And at the end of every session, he packs up and books it before you can even say “hi”.
  3. Shiro seems to be the only one blessed with the ability to tame the wild _mulletus dickheadius._ Any attempts of social interaction in his direction have been summarily rebuffed by Keith.
  4. …hideously out-of-date mullet?



…Okay, to be honest, _maybe_ he isn’t quite the asshole Lance thinks he is. His worst crimes seem to boil down to “shit haircut,” “hates talking to people,” and “got angry at Lance for spilling coffee down his shirt.” Oh, and “infuriatingly talented.” Which, well, isn’t something Lance can blame him for, honestly, but it rankles.

When he was growing up, he was growing up in the shadows of his successful older siblings, and the hyper-competitive environment of dance school was full of child prodigies and the like. Not having a lot of natural talent meant that he had to work twice as hard to get the same results as everyone around him, and if he’s a little bitter at not having a “thing,” so be it. He’s pursuing his passion, which is more than others can say for themselves. He’d bet his bottom dollar that Keith wouldn’t know hard work if it bit him. That’s how all the assholes at dance school were, anyway.

Plus, his fashion sense is shit.

Squinting at the shitty red leather behind the piano, he refocuses on his movement. Double tour, double tour, double tour — _shit,_ he fell out of beat. He composes himself and tries again. Faster, harder, more powerful pumps, over and over and over, spotting the corner as he relentlessly pushes himself to synchronize his movements. He stops for a moment, staggers, catches his breath and takes a quick moment to wipe the sweat from his brow.

 _Fuck._ Every time he thinks he’s got it, it dances out of reach again — pun not intended. His right ankle twinges, and his leg-warmer feels hot and uncomfortable under the cool studio air. He’s gonna have to go to physio to get that checked out. Again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Florona pirouetting effortlessly. Shiro complements Plaxum’s form, neat and perfect as always.

And from his isolated nest, Mullethead plays like a virtuoso.

Lance blows out a hot, frustrated breath, and tries again.

* * *

After rehearsals and physio, Lance books it to the change rooms, shimmies out of his work gear, and then into his nice jacket and faded jeans and comfy running shoes. Bag? Check. Phone? Check. Time? …Check. Sort of. It’s not like Lance _likes_ being late; it just happens. Thankfully, the café for the meet-up is only a five minute sprint down the block provided Lance doesn’t crash head-first into some unlucky dog-walker.

He sprints.

He doesn’t crash.

And skids to a stop in front of the bubble tea place.

It’s cute. Small. Quaint. All the shops in this part of town are like that. Lance shoves one shoulder against the glass door, ducks through, and gets hit with a blast of warmth and the smell of vanilla and sugar. The interior is furnished in earthen tones: glossy wood walls, matching furniture. Right now, it’s also pretty much empty. There’s a short line of college students, but they look ready to leave as soon as their orders arrive. A woman in a neat apron and dark pulled-back hair stands behind the cash register. A laptop in the corner is being furiously bashed.

“Heeeey,” says Lance.

“You’re late,” says Pidge. She has no sympathy.

She’s at one of the bigger tables. Three chairs, two of which are being hoarded by an oversized duffle and an equally oversized backpack. She’s in dark jeans, a hoodie that looks a size too large, and some really lethal looking black combat boots. Who knew someone so short could be so intimidating?

Pidge looks up from over her laptop.

Lance. Lance knew.

“This is a friend meeting. A _play_ meeting. Why do I have to be on time?” Lance mopes, carefully placing Pidge’s ginormous duffle onto the café floor.

Pidge rolls her eyes. Tartly, she informs him, “Because I have an interview today.”

“Again?”

“Yep.”

“You little genius, you.”

“We’ve already established that beforehand,” Pidge says smugly, and drinks from her already half-finished milk tea.

Basically. And also, this is not an argument he’s about to win. Lance sets his own too-heavy duffle down and sidles up to the counter to order, putting his elbows on the cool stone. Large milk tea. Extra sugar instead of ice. Lots and lots of tapioca. It takes a neat five minutes before he slides back into his seat and lets his tastebuds have a quiet religious experience upon impact.

“So there’s this guy,” Lance says around the tapioca.

“Matt says no one’s allowed to inform me of their dating business until I’m a hundred and twenty.”

“That I hate,” continues Lance.

“Ah,” says Pidge. She looks up from her computer screen, and the clicking of keys stops. “Go on.”

“I want to _shave him bald,”_ says Lance, and mimes aggressive strangulation with his fingers.

Pidge looks at him patiently. Well, patient for her. “You’re going to have to tell me how you got from point A to point B. Is this hate-hate or I-hate-his-fashion-choices hate?”

“Both.”

“Alright, extrapolate please.”

Lance tries to wad up the gigantic, enormous, hideous list of things he has against Mullethead, starting with his hair, and including his face, his jacket, his attitude, and the way he hightails it out of the studio five nights out of six with a resting murderface and not a single word. Instead of anything intelligible, he ends up making a sound like that one time Hunk and Pidge combined forces to make the radio get reception from France.

“With coherency,” says Pidge.

“He has a mullet,” Lance finally manages, because that is a really good place to start. “In this day and age. A mullet!”

“I never understood your discrimination against mullets.”

Lance stares at her in horror. “This is betrayal,” he intones. “Pidge! I understand Matt sometimes has interesting phases, but you should clearly have better — ow ow _ow!_ Okay, okay, my poor foot!”

Delicately, Pidge removes her boot heel. Lance sulks, but some things are more important than betrayal, such as listing off the rest of Mullethead’s extremely deficient characteristics. “So anyways, he always looks like his dog got stabbed, or — well, actually I won’t be surprised if he was the one doing the stabbing — and he _shuffles._ If he’s not shuffling, he’s doing this weird emo-gangster stride thing. He never talks to anyone but Shiro. He’s the last one in and the first one out and whenever anyone tries to talk to him he just kind of looks at them with a resting bitchface and makes, like, grunting sounds. Like a Neanderthal.” Lance sips aggressively at his milk tea, scowling around the bend of the straw. His free hand sweeps the air in wildly flailing gestures. “And of all people, he’s Shiro’s _little brother—”_

“Keith?” Pidge interrupts.

“Although I can't see how. They don't look alike, or act alike, and I think his bitchface has been permanent — huh?”

“Keith Yu?”

Lance grumbles into his milk tea: “Keith _something,_ alright. What, do you know him?”

“Maybe. Give me a sec.” Pidge pulls out her phone, unlocks it, and scrolls. She holds it up. A picture is blown wide on the screen. Shiro, with his hair much shorter than the ponytail he wears it in today, is grinning boyishly at the camera. One of his arms is slung around Matt. The other, the metal prosthetic, is around what is undeniably Mullethead, smiling with his mouth twisted like he doesn't know how. It looks distinctly painful.

Lance makes a face. “Yep, that’s him.”

“Wow,” says Pidge. “Small city.” She tucks her phone back into her pocket, then tilts her head thoughtfully. “Actually though, I’m surprised you haven’t met him before. You’ve known most of his friend group for years.”

“What?” says Lance. Mullethead has friends?

“He has a small friend group,” explains Pidge. “Which happens to include me.”

Oh.

Pidge temples her fingers in front of her glasses. “Look. Lance. Keith is kind of socially awkward. No, scratch that — he’s _really_ socially awkward. But he’s not a bad guy, and he has his reasons for being the way he is. If you actually take the time to know him, I think you two would actually be pretty good friends.”

Lance blinks in surprise. Before he can even respond, Pidge asks, “How’d you two meet in the first place, anyway?”

“Um,” says Lance.

Brown eyes narrow behind the round frames of Pidge’s glasses.

“I know that tone,” she says. It sounds distinctly ominous.

“Yeah. _Weeeeeeeell…”_

Lance can feel himself blushing. He doesn’t embarrass easily, but he also has three older sibling, and that means a childhood ripe with some pretty appalling incidents. The end result is that he knows exactly what the burn from his neck up means. Pidge does too, which is the problem here. Her narrowed eyes seem to gain an additional degree in critical analysis.

He tries valiantly to defend himself.

“Look, it was a total accident! I was late to practice, and I was trying to get there on time, and then Keith rounds the corner out of nowhere and my coffee went, like, _everywhere._ I said sorry and offered some napkins, but he was being pissy and I had to get to class so I tossed them his way and booked it. And then it turns out that he was going to be the pianist for _Swan Lake!_ I’m going to have to spend six months with him, Pidge. _Six months._ And he hates my guts! He’s always, like, _scowling_ whenever I look at him, and—”

Pidge doesn’t kick him, which is indication of how much Lance probably screwed up. He winces on reflex as she cuts him off with words as flat as her stare. “Have you considered that maybe he scowls at you because you spilled coffee on him and ran off?”

“Well—”

“Lance.” Her hazel eyes are withering. “Did you really apologize? Properly?”

“…” says Lance. He sucks in a breath.

Flashbacks shouldn’t be a thing that actually exists outside of terrible eighties movies, but here he is. To say Lance remembers the scene in its exactness would be a lie, but the important bits are there: the feeling of a deadline rush, coffee spilling, the feeling of deadline rush. Himself saying: _“Hey, sor-ry, I’m late for practice and I’ve just been having a pretty shitty morning. Lay off a bit.”_ And then sprinting away with thoughts of changeroom and not much else, throwing napkins behind him.

“Hahaha. Oops?” He smiles winsomely.

This time Pidge does kick him, hard enough to sting his shin bone, which is express signal for Lance needing to give up his bullshit before more creative methods are thought up. Lance kicks his feet a bit and stares at the floor between them. The smile slides off his face, like putty that doesn’t stick.

“Not really,” he admits. “I didn't. Apologize, I mean. Not properly.”

Pidge saves him the effort of extrapolating upon this error.

“You were kind of a dick,” she says flatly.

“Yeah,” he says. His voice is smaller than usual. “I can see that now.”

Pidge leans back in her chair and takes a long, judgemental slurp from her bubble tea. She considers Lance like a scientist might a specimen. He can practically feel her evaluation — Pidge is loyal to her friends, and he just confessed to being a dick to one of them. Not a good combination.

“To be fair,” she finally says, “Keith probably was as pissy as you said. I’ve known him long enough to tell.” She chews at the last dregs of tapioca. “You’d better apologize. And be patient if you want to see what he’s really like. I’ve known him for as long as Shiro’s known him, because Matt and Shiro were peas in a pod from, like, time immemorial, so trust me on this: he’s not as bad as you think.”

She finishes off her bubble tea with a loud _slurp._ “Plus, he’s the only guy I know who can actually pull off a mullet.”

“He doesn’t.”

“Bullshit. You think it looks great, you just don’t want to admit it because you’re salty that _you_ can’t pull it off.”

“I call bullshit to your bullshit.”

“Heh. Just you wait. It’ll grow on you.”

“I’ll have to stop hating him first, dude.”

Pidge tosses her cup into the garbage. "Well, that's something you have to sort out yourself. I trust the both of you to be fully functioning adults."

"Pidge," Lance says, touched.

"You're both pissy enough that Shiro might resort to physical violence if you don't."

"Never mind," says Lance.

Pidge rolls her eyes and kicks his shin under the table, but gently, in a way that says she's fond. Unfortunately, her choice of shoe-wear spans only the small category between combat and steel-toes boots, all of them with heavy tread and reinforced fronts.

At least she's not wearing the steel plated pair today.

 _"Ow,"_ says Lance.

"Let's rephrase that," Pidge informs him mercilessly, right over Lance's whining, "I trust that you can manage, between the two of you, to get together the communication and cooperation skills you both have — actually no, the communication parts going to be in you, Keith is shit at it — and manage to work, cohesively, as a unit, without giving Shiro an aneurysm before he hits thirty. Because if that happens, Matt is going to cry and then he's going to go into the realms of mad science trying to revive his best friend, and then it's going to fall on me to get rid of those giant killer robots." She considers this. "And by sibling tradition I will have to fight you for making Matt cry."

This is all very true. Except: "Matt won't cry," says Lance, chewing another mouthful of tapioca. "He’ll just jump straight to the giant killer robots."

“Matt will totally cry,” says Pidge. “He’s a _huge_ crybaby. When he was ten he threw a two-hour tantrum because Dad drank all the chocolate milk and he didn’t get any.” She bears the shit-eating grin of someone embarrassing their sibling. Lance knows that grin very well.

“Okay, the evidence is compelling. The jury rules that Matt Holt is a crybaby. But… about Keith…”

“Mmm?”

Lance’s childhood was the happy, rambunctious kind owed to an average middle-class family with four kids, a lot of relatives, and a stable, content marriage between two people who had their shit together. He knew others who didn’t have that luxury; they were more numerous than statistics liked to point out, and that was because generally family drama was kept firmly within the family. One of his aunts had been like that. She’d shown up at Grandma’s door with a five year old at her hip and fresh divorce papers in hand; no one had known how bad things had gotten before that. Keith is Shiro’s baby bro, and Shiro is — decidedly _not_ like Keith, in a lot of ways. Not the least because Shiro is personable. There’s a story there. Lance, despite Pidge’s occasional eyerolls, has enough tact not to finish that sentence and ask.

Also: there are more important points for discussion in the immediate present.

Lance regards Pidge suspiciously.

“Do you _really_ think he can pull off a mullet?”

* * *

Lance waffles over Pidge’s advice for a week, which is a week he passes by staring narrow-eyed for disproportionate amounts of time at Mullethead’s skinny, jacket-covered backside while a mental rages. In exhibit A sits Lance the decent human being, vocalizing the desire to right previous wrongs. In exhibit B — which is also by far the louder one — sits the list of all of Mullethead’s various Neanderthal qualities and a lot of indignant wheezing.

The week passes. Lance does not engage in conversation with the Mullethead. Lance’s desire to punch Mullethead in the face recedes, and then blows back in waves when Mullethead does particularly irritating things, and then recedes again when he thinks of Pidge saying: _“Patience, young grasshopper.”_ Shiro’s presence helps too. Lance has every iota of confidence in Matt’s ability to bring on a localized apocalypse of giant killer mecha robots should the opportunity arise, and even worse than that is the thought of Shiro using his Yelling Voice again, followed by Disappointed Tone Number Five and Disappointed Eyes Number One.

Those hurt, _okay?_

So that brings Lance to the last theatre, exhibit C: the frankly kind of terrifying knowledge that somewhere Pidge is emitting waves of judgement in his direction, and she’ll also probably be giving the Lance-and-Mullethead show a status check in the near future. In combination with Shiro and the fact that Lance needs his performance to work — for himself if no one else — and okay _maybe he did start the whole thing in the first place…_

He folds on Tuesday.

Lunch break has Mullethead cracking his knuckles, swinging his legs over the piano seat, and then slipping through the side door that nobody uses. Lance follows him, into the hallway, and then sidles up as Mullethead takes a swig from his water bottle.

“Yo Mmm-Keith.”

 _Do not say Mullethead,_ thinks Lance. That would be hella rude.

Keith puts down his water. “…Yeah?” he says warily, and Lance is reminded again of alley cats.

Well, it’ll be fine. Lance has this conversation _all figured out._

He smiles in a way he knows is charming, raises his eyebrows and delivers a very smooth: “So, how do you feel about a haircut?”

Mullethead stares at him.

“I know a really good barber,” assures Lance, continuing. “She is A-okay with any cut, as long as it isn’t a mullet, and I dunno if you’re a dye kind of guy but her colours are pretty awesome too.”

Fashion choices. These are what gets Lance most of the girls and some of the guys. He awaits applause.

And gets water down the front of his shirt.

“That’s for the coffee,” Mullethead says, very flatly, turns and stalks away with stiff shoulders, down the hall and out of sight around the corner in the precious seconds it takes Lance to register the offense, thank God these are just practice clothes, what the fucking _fuck_ —

“Oh my God,” says Hunk, five hours later, into his hands. “Did you really say that? Tell me you didn’t really say that.”

They’re at the dinner table, and Lance is trying to drown his anger with ravioli and shredded chicken.

“Look,” Lance says around his bulging cheeks. “I was just trying to be nice, get to know the guy, be less of a _dick.”_ He swallows and stares down at his plate. The tomato sauce stares back accusingly at him, like the back of Keith’s stupid red jacket. He stabs his fork into a piece of pasta.

Hunk’s expression is one of actual despair. At least, Lance is certain that’s what it would be if it wasn’t covered, because hands.

“Lance, you do realize that one of the first things you did after spilling coffee on him was to _make fun of his hair,_ right? You get that?”

Lance doesn’t answer him. He is totally immersed in his ravioli. _Stab._ Cheese oozes out the holes. Gooey orange. Yum yum. The spices really make the dish.

“Lance. Buddy. Bro.”

 _Stab._ He stuffs the last forkful into his mouth. He’s out of ravioli.

Hunk unlatches his hands from his face. He looks up beseechingly at the ceiling, as if asking the Big Man in the Sky for viable answers. Any viable answer.

“Are you sulking? Bro. Come on.”

Since Hunk is evidently not eating his own dinner, Lance makes a call of judgement and steals more ravioli from Hunk’s plate, along with carrots and peas. Mmm. Comfort food.

“Lance.”

“…I’m not _sulking,”_ says Lance, after finishing off the remainder of Hunk’s dinner as well.

Hunk’s gaze is flat.

Lance stares back. Mulishly.

Hunk’s doesn’t blink.

Lance folds. “…Okay. In hindsight, it was a pretty dumb decision. I just got kind of distracted by…”

“By what?”

Even though this is Hunk, getting the words out still feels like pulling teeth. Or maybe unspooling his pride. “It’s just. I talked to Pidge, right? And the thing is that she’s been friends with Keith. Friends with him for a while. And she kinda made me realize that I wasn’t really being fair to Keith. And I just — there’s a lot of reasons why I should’ve apologized to him, and I got caught up in that and acted without thinking it through. And now he’s pissed off at me. Because. Yeah.” He gestures in some vague, defeated direction and then stares at his table utensils. “And now it’s bad.”

“Hey now,” says Hunk. He reaches across the table, puts his hand on Lance’s shoulder. “It’s not the end of the world. What I think you should really do is apologize in a way that doesn’t involve a hair salon.”

“That… was pretty stupid, wasn’t it.”

 _“Yes,”_ says Hunk empathetically.

“I just have to not see the mullet in the Mullethead — _Keith,_ I mean,” says Lance. “And actually apologize this time round.”

“…Let’s work on managing his name first.”

Lance pouts. “I know his name fine. Keith Yu. It’s… Asian? And Shiro’s Shirogane. Man, do we even use Shiro’s actual first name? It’s… Uh… Tak’shi? Is that how you pronounce it? But back to Mu — uh wait _no I mean Keith._ Hey, don’t look at me like that! The mull — argh!”

Lance throws up his hands in defeat.

Luckily, Hunk takes pity on him. “Okay, so his fashion choices aren’t the best ever, but you know what you need to do now right?”

“Yeah,” sighs Lance.

“C’mon, cheer up a little. You have a game plan now and everything. And who knows — you said Pidge likes him right? Maybe you’ll like him, too? Chin up, dude, you’ve got this.”

Lance laughs a bit. “Thanks, buddy.” He holds out his fist. “Fistbump?”

Hunk bumps him. “Bro.”

_“Bro.”_

* * *

The next day, Lance leaves Keith a box of Hunk’s best zucchini brownies on the piano bench.

Anticipating Keith’s quick exit from the studio, Lance decides instead to arrive early for once, skipping the coffee run. Instead of toting a cup of Timmies, he has a simple cardstock box crammed with brownies, tied off with some twine. There’s a little note in blue pen, tucked in between the strings:

Hey, sorry for being a dick to you. Apology brownies? — Lance

He looks at it and cringes. It was the best he could write without being awkward. Lance already wants to reconsider this whole endeavour. It’s a weird thing to do, he knows, but he’s been starting to feel really bad about how they started off and he’s Shiro’s little brother and according to Pidge and maybe also recent observations he doesn’t actually seem that bad —

Ugh.

He has to do it. His mom would kill him over the bad manners he’s been showing. Pidge would judge him. Shiro would get an aneurysm and Matt would destroy the world.

So he scurries to the baby grand, deposits the box on the bench like it’s on fire, and goes to the barre to start warming up. Keith is probably going to throw it out or something, anyways.

For the rest of the day, Lance determinedly keeps his gaze away from the piano and the stupid red jacket. When he’s not focused on the player himself, Keith’s music is hypnotic. He has the best practice session he’s had in weeks, despite the drowsiness from the lack of coffee, and goes back home feeling oddly light.

* * *

Keith is fucking _confused._

He dragged himself out of bed this morning at ass o’clock to dodge his roommates and have coffee, practiced the score, got ready, and booked it on his bike to the studio like he had for the past week, only to find a brown box waiting on the bench. That in itself was a little weird. The weirder thing was that the idiot dancer in the blue leotard wasn’t trying to bore holes through him through sheer force of staring. That’s a thing that the guy does, with what seems like laser-guided habit or focus or whatnot.

Keith is just trying to mind his own business, okay?

What’s even weirder is the _note_ that the guy left. Because it turns out that Blue Leotard Idiot is trying to… apologize?

He stares at it. Turns the paper sideways.

It’s… a late apology.

But Keith hadn’t been expecting one, period. He looks around the empty studio — practice ended, and for the first time he’s the last one there. Even Shiro had left, looking harried and muttering something about sugar plum fairies and the Nutcracker. He’s half expecting Lance to show his face and yell “Punk’d!”

But nothing happens. He’s alone with a box of apology brownies.

Keith’s never — wait, no. That’s a lie. He’s been apologized to before, but never with brownies, although Shiro likes to lob burgers and milkshakes and calls at him until he folds. Shiro apologizing is a different matter in itself, though.

Anyways: brownies. As advertised on the note. They look good, like the expensive ones in the Italian supermarket he sometimes visits by virtue of being the closest supermarket to his house. Moist, rich, dark brown, with a dusting of fine powdered sugar on top.

He looks at them a little suspiciously. Pokes at them. He turns the note over to see if there’s anything written on the back, some sort of shitty psych-out. All that it says is:

P.S. These are zucchini brownies, but they’re really good. Trust me ;)

Zucchini brownies sounds weird as hell, but he figures it’s part of the dancer lifestyle. He’s lived with Shiro for years, he knows what kind of diet they have. Besides, they smell like brownies. They look like brownies. Poke again — they feel like brownies, too. He takes a tentative bite —  _ holy shit. _

His eyes bulge a bit. He hasn’t eaten stuff this good since Mrs. Shirogane last cooked for him. Where the hell did this guy  _ find _ this stuff?

He finishes the box before he realizes that he’s finished it, licking the fudgy chocolate off his fingers. He can’t even taste any zucchini. He looks around furtively, praying that nobody noticed him eat the whole thing like a rabid animal. Thankfully, the universe decides to be nice to him for once, so he remains alone.

The empty box sits in front of him, now devoid of brownie or zucchini. It isn’t a small box. And the brownies had basically been bricked in. And wow, did he actually chew through like two kilograms of brownies in ten minutes?

He decides: this Lance guy must have been  _ really _ sorry for the coffee.

…Could he ask for more brownies?

The thought flashes through with a morbid, gripping kind of hope usually reserved for the addicted, and at the heels of that thought Keith wonders belatedly if there actually  _ was _ something fishy in those brownies, like — crack? Arsenic? Weed? Something. Or magic, because making zucchini into something that delicious definitely qualifies as sorcery.

He decides: he needs to return the favour.

The following days are weekend days that he spends playing at various clubs and restaurants. He spends as little time as he can at home, taking idle drives to High Park or going jogging, plugging in his phone to a steady stream of Oscar Peterson. When he does happen to be at home, he’s either playing piano or sleeping.

On Monday morning, he goes to Uncle Tetsu’s and orders a large cheesecake.

See, here’s the thing: Keith is lactose intolerant. It was the bane of his childhood, because all the good things in life — ice cream, cheese, milk, and most importantly,  _ cheesecake _ — were declared off-limits by the rotating cast of foster parents who took him in.

That is, until the Shiroganes.

Because Shiro is  _ also _ lactose intolerant. And yet Keith saw him eating everything denied to him as a child — chocolate ice cream, milk straight out of the carton (he got yelled at by Mrs. and Mr. Shirogane for that) and a fluffy, delicious kind of cheesecake that Keith had never seen before. Shiro called it “Japanese cheesecake.”

So he did what every other errant tween would: he nabbed the cake while Shiro and his parents were out and ate the whole thing. And it was wonderful, it was freaking amazing, it was what Keith imagined nirvana would be like; it was in short the best shit he had ever got his dirty little hands on.

Two hours, three trips to the bathroom, and a gentle but firm scolding later, Keith had an order of lactase pills and got to eat cheesecake just as much as the other kids did. Which meant only after dinner and also whenever the Shiroganes weren’t watching.

He’s got a lot of fond memories attached to Japanese cheesecake, and it’s the best thing he can think of to give back.

The problem is, of course, the actual  _ giving _ of the stupid present.

He gets the cheesecake, and even gets it gift-wrapped and everything, nothing fancy — the establishment has this thing with minimalism — but a simple red ribbon against the clean white box makes it nice. He even times it just right. The cake is still piping hot when he makes it to the studio. That’s the easy part.

The hard part is actually going up to Lance, looking him in the eye, and giving the goddamn cheesecake to him. He takes one look at that stupid blue leotard, looks back down at the box in his hands, and has a tiny mental breakdown trying to get “do you want cheesecake” out of his mouth.

Instead of actually doing anything, he just ends up scurrying to the piano bench. He says to himself  _ now’s not a good time, just wait until the break to give it to him, _ but then Lance is surrounded by all his buddies at the barre and obviously Keith can’t go  _ now, _ there’s  _ people _ there. And then he says to himself  _ do it after warm-ups _ but then the warm-ups end and they’re moving on to actual practice. And then the practice ends and Lance is gone to who knows where and only Shiro is left, packing his things up.

Shit.

The cheesecake is cold.

He leans forward and knocks his head gently on the edge of the piano. Gently, only because this is the nicest thing he’s played on.

“Hey Shiro?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you please take this cheesecake.”

“…Uh, okay?” 

“Thanks. Can you also throw me out the window?”

“No, thank you. I like my brothers alive, not dead.”

He knocks his head against the piano again.

* * *

 

Plan B.

As Keith steers his bike back home through the crisp November air, he frantically racks his brain for a better idea. His fingers itch to grab his headphones, plug in and let a steady stream of music in to calm the sideways tangle of his head and bring him some clarity, but he can’t do that while he’s riding.

He stops at a red light, watching people pass by. He’s in the nice, expensive part of the downtown core, right by the rich-people waterfront properties — all the cars are gleaming, the roads are perfectly paved, there are trees planted at neat intervals. It’s all so delicate and modern, like a perfectionist’s —

a perfectionist’s —

“Oh wait,” Keith whispers, and nearly misses the green light. A loud honk startles him back into motion, but it doesn’t matter. He’s got an idea.

Ballet dancers, Keith knows, are always trying to get  _ better. _ They are the quintessential perfectionist, and there’s nothing they like more than the satisfaction of nailing a move. Shiro always appreciated it when he gave him pointers. 

Keith contemplates. Giving Lance pointers seems like a good idea. He doesn’t have much else to offer — well, he can try the cheesecake route again, but knowing him, he’s probably going to blunder straight into the same wall of social inability as before and then he’ll have to lob the cake at Shiro’s face. Advice isn’t liable to get cold or deflated, and it can be given at any time, and… it shows appreciation, doesn’t it? That he’s been paying attention to the dance? He can try giving Lance some advice after practice, before he leaves the studio. Then he’ll be alone, and Keith won’t get stage fright from all his other friends.

It’s a good idea. There’s not a whole lot of ways it can go wrong.

* * *

Lance’s practice ends in what is possibly the most humiliating way possible.

Actually, no, that’s a lie. The practice is fine. Lance has been feeling pretty good about the routine these past few days — he’s at the point where muscle memory is taking over for the simpler parts and even the difficult technical moves are beginning to flow without a hitch, leaving room for Lance to start expressing the  _ story _ of the ballet. You can impress with your technical skill, but the soul of art lies in moving people. 

The problem is when practice ends, and Lance is running through the last of his cool down stretches and tallying the amount of time he has to catch the next bus, when Mullethead swings out from behind the grand piano and heads towards him. It’s still kind of a gangster shuffle. A shuffle stride? “Hey, uhm. Lance.” 

“Yo. What’s up?” Lance definitely doesn’t bring up the embarrassing apology brownies, just looks up as casually as he can from the ground where his elbows are locked with the ground.

There’s a moment where Mullethead doesn’t say anything. He just kind of stops, licks his lips, and blinks a little frantically, while Lance graciously allows him to gather his words, because okay, dude doesn’t have the best social graces going on here, he gets that. 

And then he opens his mouth.

“Uh. You might want to work on your relevés. They’re a little too wide.” His face is stoic. “And you could definitely work on that right leg, it drags a lot.”

Lance  _ should not have let him gather his freaking words. _

For a moment though, he’s not even sure he heard right. Like, what? Excuse me? First of all:  _ rude. _ So the brownies might have been embarrassing, but they were an effort in friendship! And second: What the hell would a pianist know about ballet? Like, what? Who the hell gave him the right to criticize Lance’s form when he knows exactly nothing and he’s just — 

But to his mortification, Shiro nods in agreement. His instructor doesn’t even look up from his binder as he says, “Keith’s right, your relevés could definitely be tighter. And you should make a few more visits to physio about your leg.” And to make things worse, the last stragglers are looking on in interest while Lance is trying to rein in his offense. It nearly breaks loose, until he remembers:

_ “Be patient if you want to see what he’s really like.” _

So he swallows. Maybe this is just Keith being awkward or something. Maybe he’s just taking it too hard. He doesn’t know the guy very well, but he knows that Pidge would be a decent judge of character.

So he pushes it aside.

So he says, “Oh, thanks for the advice, dude!” and gives him a smile.

Keith nods once, sharply. Then he scurries off to the piano to take his leave again.

The thing is it doesn’t happen just once. It happens again. And again. And again.

He gets these comments at the end of each practice. Three days in a row. And each time Keith has the same blankly inexpressive expression and flat, blunt tones. Lance bears day two patiently. Day two is his jetés. 

Okay. Okay, Mullethead. Fine.

The third and last time, Lance loses his shit.

This practice, he drilled his double tours. It was sweaty, terrible, frustrating work. He could  _ feel _ every time he went off Keith’s stupid, perfect music, and it drove him absolutely nuts every time it did. But finally —  _ finally _ — at the end of the stupid, tortuous fucking hour, he nailed it.  _ Nailed it. _ Even if he was a little off on that last tour, the rest of them were utterly flawless. He felt exhilarated. He felt alive. He felt like every last minute of his sweat, blood and tears to nail this stupid fucking move was worth it.

He felt  _ proud. _

And then the fucking asshole Mullet goes up to his sweaty, heaving form, and says:

“Your double tours are really off beat.”

It takes every ounce of rapidly fraying composure that Lance does not have to not punch him in the face. 

Because here’s the thing: Lance is no genius.

Lance has never been a genius, not in mathematics or sciences or language or arts, not even in dance, though he loves it: loves ballet, has loved ballet, will always love ballet. Lance’s older sister was a prodigy in ballet — she’d been accepted into the Royal Ballet and almost went overseas to England before quitting, age twenty, to focus on her entrance to law school. Lance has three older siblings and they are all gifted, talented, successful people. He’s so, so proud of them, but he’d known, right from the beginning, that things wouldn’t come to him with the ease and clarity it did for them. Ballet class was hard. Ballet school nearly broke him. Here, finally making it to a company, grabbing the second soloist position — it was the biggest achievement of his life. He might’ve never made it out of the general corps if it wasn’t for the fact that he threw every little part of him into it. For all he might be late for practice in the mornings, he works himself to the bone. And even then, he’s surrounded by rising stars that fit solo parts like they were tailor-made for them.

So when the stupid, stupid  _ fucking _ shit-eating sonuvabitch  _ virtuoso, _ one that never touched a pair of ballet shoes in his life, goes up to him to throw all his work in the dust — 

“Could you just  _ shut UP,” _ —

— it isn’t surprising that he reacts the way he does.

And he can’t stop, once it comes out from a champagne bottle rocketing violently the moment it hits release. “What the  _ hell _ do you — who  _ died _ and left you in charge of ballet?! Coming up to me after every practice—” he makes a sound so angry it shocks him a little — “Just shut the  _ fuck up! Shut up! Stop it!” _

Lance’s chest is heaving, his hands clenched tightly at his sides. There’s a ringing, pervasive silence. Shiro wheels around, expression alarmed. 

“Hey, hey, what the hell is going on in my stud—” 

Keith beats him to the punch. Some small, cool part of Lance notes that Keith was probably not a good person to piss off, but even watching the feral rise of Keith’s shoulders, the snarl behind his bared teeth, Lance only feels the need to match him tit-for-tat. Keith — the  _ shitbag _ — says with a growl in his voice, “Oh, you wanna fucking  _ go—” _

“Fucking fight me, you piece of shit—”

“GUYS.”

Lance is about to lunge, he really is, but a hand snags his collar and reels him away. It’s not Shiro. Lance knows it’s not Shiro, because Shiro is opposite of him with his hand on Keith’s shoulder, expression doing a thing that’s one part unhappy and two parts thunderous authority.

“Lance,” says Plaxum, sounding worried, “what the heck is wrong with you?” He doesn’t answer, too busy staring down the wild animal in shitty red pleather.

“You two,” says Shiro.

It’s not anywhere near a yell. It doesn’t need to be. The tone of it sends an electric jolt down Lance’s spine, one that snaps him abruptly out of his haze of anger. It’s low, and utterly controlled. He’s never heard Shiro sound like that.

He looks at Mullethead. Mullethead, completely and utterly still under Shiro’s grip, hackles no longer raised but still tense as a wire, looking up sideways at Shiro.

…Okay. He’s fucked up. But for some mysterious reason, he’s completely devoid of any remorse for what he said to the shitbag himself. How funny.

“Sorry,” he says to Shiro, low and subdued, “for being unprofessional and disruptive. It won’t happen again.” Plaxum’s grip loosens on him, and he breaks free of her grip.

Lance walks towards the change room doors and doesn’t look back.

* * *

Shiro’s grip on Keith’s shoulder is a familiar one. The weight of it is warm but steely, and as Lance kicks open the change room doors, it loosens and draws away. Shiro looks frayed. There’s a tension to his shoulders and a stiffness in the draw of his eyebrows, a frown tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

Keith has no idea what the shit just happened. He just feels the phantom adrenaline of a fight that wasn’t, fists curled by his sides like hooks, ready to claw and bite.

He looks up at Shiro. Eventually, Shiro drags his gaze away from the closed doors, breathes out a sigh, and glances sideways at Keith.

Shiro is the kind that locks down and goes solid and focused in a crisis. The weariness disappears in a split second, as if it was never there. There’s no judgement in his voice.

“Can you explain to me what happened?”

Unfortunately, he has no fucking clue.

“I… don’t know.” says Keith. “I thought.” He stops. Shiro waits, patient. “I thought… we were getting along?”

“That’s what I thought too,” murmurs Shiro.

They look at one another. 

Usually, Shiro is pretty good at catching Keith’s social blunders, but even Shiro looks lost.

…He doesn’t get it. What the hell, Lance. Maybe the apology brownies were a fluke. Maybe he was always a dick. He didn’t give any sign, any warning — just acted all normal until today. He feels like he’s thirteen, twelve, six years old, watching the other kids play patty-cake and tag while he tries to understand how they made friends.

When he goes home that night, he drowns himself in his music until his roommates bang on the walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kkachi: hello hello! before the two of us go to watch season five, we decided to drop the next chapter as a kind of celebration.  
> Cyan: HELLO SEASON 5.  
> kkachi: i heard lance gets a sword???  
> Cyan: I have not heard that but it sounds great.  
> kkachi: he can be stabby like keith now.  
> Cyan: Yep. And, moving onto the actual fic: in this chapter a lot of things happen, like social ineptness and going back to square one.  
> kkachi: did you think they’d make up and be friends? did you really think we would be that nice? writers are cruel creatures. we enjoy the suffering of our characters. and our audience.  
> Cyan: And our main characters cannot self-regulate, apparently. That helps too.  
> kkachi: i mean, it’s keith and lance. they’re not exactly the epitomes of maturity. feel free to throw tomatoes at us via the comment section if you didn’t like this chapter, comment and kudos if you did!  
> Cyan: Thanks for reading!


	4. Act I, Scene IV: Finale

“Can’t you make the music go any faster?” snaps Lance.

Keith looks sideways past the grand piano, and narrows his eyes accordingly.

“Maybe if you could keep up, I would.” 

Day seven.

“Oh yeah? I bet you’re just going slow because you didn’t practice enough, Mr. Prodigy.”

Before he can start playing double time to prove Lance wrong, Shiro’s eyes fly across the room to fix them with his gray-eyed stare. They both shut up.

Day seven is not any better than day two or day three; it is, however, in terms of sheer urge to slam Lance’s head into a wall, better than days four and five. The last two days had been a cool off. Otherwise known as Keith’s weekend. Keith had calmly not thought about Lance’s stupid face for an entire forty eight hours, had in fact gone with Shiro to get Chinese takeout and a nice dessert and then returned, Monday morning, in significantly better spirits than when he’d departed Saturday evening, only to be once again faced with Lance the Idiot and his stupid blue leotard.

Keith is not twelve years old anymore. Breaking Lance’s nose is going to be considered assault instead of a trip to the principal’s office, or, depending on the extremity of parental hysterics, a month in juvie. He’s an adult man who has to deal with adult life and adult consequences.

He cannot break Lance’s nose.

Unfortunately, Keith has to remind himself of this. Repeatedly. And at length. He really,  _ really _ wants to break Lance’s nose. He can already picture the look of stupid shock on his idiotic face; it would be  _ so _ satisfying, the way his eyes would widen before the pain hit, just like Billy Anders in tenth grade. And unlike social grace or dancing, Keith is 99% sure he’s better at punching things than Lance.

Miraculously, they make it to lunch without further hostilities. Well, any active hostilities, at least. Lance is glaring at him, which Keith ignores, instead choosing to slam viciously at the piano keys.

Unfortunately for him, Shiro is  _ also _ watching him. That’s the important part. Keith knows quite well that the whole thing between Lance and himself probably translates to  _ complications _ for Shiro in terms of work, and he loves Shiro, he really does, which is why he hasn’t tried to punch Lance’s face in yet. 

This time was not actually Keith’s fault. He’s also not going to be the one going up and apologizing for whatever Lance’s problem is. 

He’s eating a sandwich, chugging down the rest of his water from a nearly empty plastic water-bottle, when one of the main doors to the studio — not the side door Keith accidentally came in through — swings open. A short man’s head pokes through the opening. 

“Mr. Shirogane, sir, the artistic director would like to speak to you.”

Shiro blinks and turns to the door as a jovial, accented voice says, “There’s no need for such formalities now, chap.”

The doors open in full to reveal a middle-aged man. He’s wearing a navy blue suit, spiffy dress shoes, and a ridiculous rainbow polka-dot bowtie. Leaping around the dancers with surprising agility, the man makes his way to Shiro. He gives little waves and “excuse me”s to the scattered dancers along the way, the dancers greeting him back.

As he approaches Shiro, the director’s kind smile fades. His disposition becomes more serious, in spite of his puffy moustache and ridiculous bowtie. Actually, with the closer view to the man, he can see that the bowtie isn’t polka-dot; it’s covered in little cat faces.

Keith can’t hear the conversation, but he can read Shiro’s body language well enough. There’s a certain look to Shiro when faced with bad news. His shoulders go tight, his posture snaps straight, feet planted at perfect balance width apart, as if to gain an extra steadiness he’ll need to counteract the weight of whatever crisis at hand. There’s a still, chilling sense of focus about him, even from a distance. Keith watches him listen to the director carefully, head tilted, hands clasped behind his back.

Finally, the conversation ends. Shiro nods smoothly, robotically, as the man turns back to the door. He leaves with a wave; the room, even amid the casual chatter of breaktime, feels strangely silent as the danseurs fix their eyes at Shiro instead of on their food.

“Attention, everyone!” It’s unnecessary; everyone is already paying attention. “Wednesday afternoon, people from the GAL Review of the Arts will be coming in to review the work that we have so far on Swan Lake. I know we’re nowhere near finished our preparations for the ballet, but apparently they want an insider look on how our company practices. They have high expectations of us, accordingly. And we have to do our best to try to uphold those expectations.” 

He pauses, and the room lets that bit of information sink in for a moment. Then Shiro says, “Lance, Keith, I need to talk to you privately for a moment,” and even though his tone of voice is reasonable and perfectly calm, all Keith can think of is  _ fuck. _

He eyes Lance. Halfway across the room, the idiot’s finally snapped out of his dreamy, longing staring at the door. He seems, now, to be having the exact realization as Keith, if his expression is anything to go by. 

_ Fuck, _ Keith thinks again, and then leaves the remainder of his lunch on the piano bench to go and face the music. 

Shiro looks remarkably unflappable when they reluctantly but bravely venture into the back corner where he’s waiting for them, arms crossed and his flesh fingers tapping out an absent tune on the bicep of his metal arm. That’s — good. Maybe. It means Shiro has a plan.

“Hey,” says Keith, quietly.

“Hiiii,” says Lance, drawn out and noticeably guilty.

They refuse to look at one another, standing in the back. The mirrors and lofty, soaring ceiling of the studio paired with all the windows make even the corner seem like a vast space. Keith refuses to feel like a kid about to get a scolding; it doesn't work.

“Keith. Lance,” Shiro starts. “I’ve noticed you two have been having some trouble lately. Is that right?” His straight-backed posture reminds Keith of military marches, air-cadets at twelve and thirteen years old.

The two of them nod stiffly. Shiro doesn’t uncross his arms, just regards them, head tilted the slightest to the side, and his even though his tone isn’t accusatory, just matter-of-fact, it still feels like a gutting. 

“This, I have to remind you, is a  _ professional _ institution. We can’t allow this kind of behaviour. Whatever started this feud, it’s petty and childish. Even if it wasn’t for the inspection, I would have had to stop this misconduct. Because this is  _ unacceptable. _ It’s distracting the other dancers, and distracting  _ me. _ If this performance flops, the Palais will pay for it in its hard-earned reputation. This kind of behaviour is completely counter to our expectations of those who work here. You both know this.” His eyes are steel as he says, “Resolve your issues.”

Silence.

Shiro’s eyes narrow.

Lance says, “Yes, sir!” in a slightly terrified voice. Keith nods jerkily.

And then they’re dismissed, because on top of the Lance-and-Keith disaster show, Shiro has an entire company of dancers to coordinate and an inspection he needs to be ready for. 

Keith goes back to the piano with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, and again, all of a sudden, it hits him how strange and out of place he feels inside the studio. He likes quiet and dark spaces, small spaces, the result of a childhood he spent in closets, spilling classic rock and jazz tapes into an old cassette player with headphones clamped on, trying to ignore the clamour of the other foster children. The studio is the opposite of that. In the bright air, he feels unsettled, like a bug exposed to a spotlight. He hides behind the piano and plays with more force than necessary for the remainder of the session, trying to burn off the frustration and the guilty edge that’s festering in his stomach. Lance’s glare only makes things worse.

Keith thinks about it, well into the afternoon, fingers going from flying to almost absent-minded, knowing the music well enough that his mind can wander once the initial vicious edge of emotion wears off. He doesn’t know how to deal with this situation. This is why he dislikes working with other people. He thinks about it at three and then at four, as the hours blend into nearly five in the afternoon and practice is about to end. He’s grasping at the ends of ideas, unsteady wisps of understanding slipping through his fingers. How do you make a person stop hating you?

He doesn’t know. The answers dissipate faster than he can get his hands on them.

And then, like bile rising, he feels angry all over again. At Lance. At the stupid fucking coffee. Stupider still, the  _ brownies. _ The cheesecake. Stupid, stupid, all of it. Where did he go wrong? Trying to figure out how he fucked up socially (again) is like playing the most confusing game of sudoku in the world, and being  _ aware _ of how badly he fucked up sharpens the edges of his frustration.

The practice ends. Keith barely notices it, staring at black and white keys and not receiving any answers. He’s still playing when all the dancers, even Lance, eventually file out. 

A hand taps his shoulder.

“Keith.”

His hands still on a dissonant chord. The sound dies out.

Today Shiro’s dressed in a white button shirt and an English wool coat, fawn coloured and unbuttoned at his throat. Dark slacks. Black oxfords. His hair is snapped into a short ponytail, and the edge of uneven bangs tickle his eyes. He looks extremely professional, which considering the meeting with the director is probably a good thing. He perches himself on the edge of the piano bench, hands on his knees, and all of a sudden he’s not Shiro, former premier danseur legend, but Takashi again.

Takashi slouches, mainly.

“Are you o—”

“I’m  _ fine, _ Takashi.”

A long silence. The studio is finally quiet.

“I’m not going to go over the issue again. I know you understand why it’s an issue. I’m asking because I know you. Are you okay?”

“I said I’m  _ fine, _ okay?” The words come out with teeth. “Or are you going to fire me if I’m not? Find someone who can  _ get along _ with Lance—”

_ “Keith.” _

He shuts up.

“Sorry.” It comes out petulant.

For a while, they just sit.

“Don’t you have work to do? Ballets to choreograph or something?”

“You come first.”

He says it casually, matter of factly. Keith scowls, doesn’t look at him.

After another eternity, Keith puts his head on Shiro’s shoulder and stops seeing red.

* * *

The summer just before Keith turned fifteen, Shiro — who had, for the majority of Keith’s school year, been shuttling around most of North America and half of western Europe for his performances — took him to Paraty, Brazil, where Shiro’s maternal grandparents had a business running a lodge for tourists, bed and breakfast all included. The town was two hundred and fifty miles out from Rio de Janeiro. It was made of little white-walled houses and front doors painted a myriad of bright colours, set against the ocean on one side and the backdrop of mountains on the other.  Shiro’s grandparents gave him a room painted daisy center yellow and then took him out boating in the humid summer heat, and seemed to take it as their mission to feed him until he burst. They spoke broken English and frantic, energetic Portuguese. It rained often, the kind of rain Shiro taught him to run through laughing. The air conditioner broke down more often than it ran and the mosquitoes reigned supreme. Shiro’s grandparents called him _baixinho_ which Shiro cheerfully told him meant was an endearment translating to little person. Keith was offended for all five seconds before he remembered that they also called Shiro _baixinho;_ and Shiro was 5’9 with muscle.

It was one of the best summers of his life.

The two of them get out of Shiro’s car and step into the Brazilian restaurant, slide into their seats. The restaurant is called  _ Rio 40, _ excellent food, decent prices. They order their go-to’s — a hearty a black bean stew with smoked meat for Shiro, and bright, juicy beef skewers for Keith — along with appetizers of deep fried calamari in tartar sauce and cassava fries, topped off with generous helpings of rice and beans. Shiro, because he has things like social grace and tact, allows Keith to half-finish his meal before they delve into their actual, existing problems.

“So, lil’ bro,” he says, apropos to nothing, “what do you want to do with your life?”

Nevermind. Shiro has no social grace or tact. Keith eyes him over a mouth full of cassava fries.

“Where’s this coming from?”

“The goodness of my heart that keeps imagining you dying alone with ten cats,” says Shiro solemnly. 

Keith snorts. Goodness of his heart. He braces a knee on the edge of his chair and drawls: “Are we really sure we should be talking about my love life? You’re the one with literal gray hairs here.”

Shiro gasps in mock offence. He’s grinning a little. “Are you bullying your poor, ailing older brother?”

“Ailing my ass,” says Keith around a beef skewer.

“Language.”

_ “Language _ my ass.” 

It’s comfortable, easy, familiar banter. Shiro does this whenever things get awkward, which has been… often. Since the accident. It’s been getting less often, which is good, letting Keith slip back into the old worn routine of being Shiro’s shithead little brother. Keith flicks a fry at Shiro’s dumb face and gets a calamari back at ballistic trajectories. It hits his nose and bounces onto his plate, leaving a smear of dip on his nose. 

“We are at a restaurant,” Keith informs Shiro, who looks smug with himself. Keith cannot start a food fight in this restaurant — this is his favourite restaurant. He has enough tact for  _ that, _ at least.

“I know we’re at a restaurant,” says Shiro, eyes laughing. 

Shithead.

Keith substitutes his urge to kick Shiro in the shin with eating the rest of his beef skewers, and then with a thick chocolate pudding for dessert. 

Shiro looks good, eyes bright and the edge of a snicker on his face, and eventually the topic diverts to shitty coffee and Keith’s annoying roommates and Shiro’s dancers — of whom Keith can now finally place a name and face to. Shiro is very, very proud of them. Plaxum has always had textbook forms but now her leaps are beginning to gain a certain signature edge. Florona’s dodgy  _ promenade en arabesques _ are finally stabilizing. Lance is —

Well, they had to get to Lance eventually.

Keith scowls.

“So,” starts Shiro. 

Sentences that came out of Shiro’s mouth starting with “so” never turn out well. “I thought we weren’t going over this issue again?” 

Shiro shrugs, sheepish. “Well, I figured you needed a cool down,” he says philosophically. “You two  _ will  _ need to work together, you know that?”

“I think we need to try to not kill each other first.”

The remaining half of Keith’s beef skewer disappears into Shiro’s mouth; Keith makes a face at him. He says: “Acknowledging the problem is the first step.”

“The fucking problem is his personality,” scowls Keith. “We had been—” getting along. Keith had considered it his yearly alloted social miracle. He had went out of his way to get  _ cheesecake _ for the bastard. “Look, I don’t know what problem that idiot has, except even I know that screaming out of absolutely nowhere isn’t fucking  _ normal.” _ He stabbed his fork into his pudding and made a noise of undisputed outrage.

“Lance isn’t usually…” Shiro trails off.

“So I heard. Is he an asshole just for me, then?”

_ “Keith.” _

“This is my judgement face. I can judge however and however much I want,” says Keith, and adds, under his breath, “Fucking cheesecake.”

Shiro has ears of a  _ bat _ of course, so three minutes and an endless amount of wheedling later Keith finds himself spilling all the beans — the entire, beaten, sack of beans he’d been kicking into the back his skeleton closet for the past week — to Shiro, who by the cheesecake bit is bent over the table with his knuckles over his mouth trying to valiantly muffle hysterical laughter and letting out snickers anyway. “Oh my god,  _ Keith,” _ he says. At least one of them is finding this whole shitshow amusing. Keith is beginning to serious doubt his character judgement for the past however long — and also wondering why he didn’t smash the cheesecake into Shiro’s face. Or Lance’s. 

“Shut up Takashi.”

“And you just — gave it to me? Keith.  _ Keith.” _ His shoulders are trembling.

Keith steals the remainder of Shiro’s calamari in vengeance. 

“Alright,” Shiro says, another few minutes into the future when his composure has finally returned. ‘You don’t like him, he doesn’t like you. Fine — I think at this point we’ll need more than our current timeframe to sort it all out. Of course, I would prefer it if you two weren’t at each other’s throats, but…” His expression turns thoughtful. “Well, it’s not mandatory.” He considers Keith, tone gentling. “Do you think you two can try faking it?”

Keith stabs his fork into his pudding, again.

Of course he can try. Lance could be a serial killer but if it’s for Shiro Keith will probably still try, no exceptions. He looks at Shiro, smile curling at the corner of his mouth, looking pensive and delighted simultaneously, backlit by the restaurant lights and with his dumb too-long hair around his shoulders. Of course he’ll try.

“Yeah, okay, fine.” says Keith.

He’s just really not looking forward to the trying.

* * *

“This isn’t working,” is the first thing Keith says into the phone, five minutes into lunch break of the next day, after ignoring Lance for the majority of morning practice and then nearly spraining his wrist on the baby grand trying to restrain himself from shooting back a truly imaginative comment to Lance’s snort the minute lunch break started. He stepped outside for fresh air, looked at the contact list on his phone, and impulse-dialled Pidge for advice.

“What the fuck,” muffles Pidge, on the other side.

“I need help,” extrapolates Keith. He zips up the collar of his jacket; November wind buffers against his throat. 

“It is 11:35 in the morning, I have  _ afternoon _ classes today, and I have not had my coffee yet. I am about one shitty explanation away from a murderous rampage.”

“Uhm,” says Keith. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

“Keith you fucking shithead if you’re getting stage fright right  _ now—” _

Keith lunges for his words. “Okay, wait no don’t hang up on me. I need — I need help. Do you remember the job Shiro got me a month ago for the — um. The ballet place?”

“Yeah?”

“Look. Okay. There’s this guy I really —” 

“Is this about frigging  _ Lance?” _

“What,” says Keith. “How did you —” 

"I thought I already counselled the other half of your disaster show, oh my God. Didn’t you two make up like a week ago or whatever?”

“What,” Keith repeats, for lack of anything better to say. A week ago was — oh. “No. I don’t know. I think we were getting somewhere but then the guy just blew the hell up, so — ”

_ “Lance _ blew up?” Pidge sounds marginally more awake now.

Keith props up on the metal bench he’d draped himself on — the kind ubiquitous to the downtown area. A few fat pigeons are pecking near his feet. “Surprise, surprise, I know. Somehow I managed to piss him off.”

“Congratulations on your momentous fucking achievement. Okay, okay. Urgh. Give me three minutes, I need to kick my coffee maker into starting up.”

He waits on the cold metal bench, hearing the quiet sounds of Pidge shuffling through her dorm, swearing softly as she slowly wakes herself up.

“Just a warning,” she says, when the noise picks back up. “I’m a comp sci major, not psychology, so as much as I pretend to, I don’t actually know what goes on in your dumbass brains.” There’s a pause, a swallow. “Give me it from the top.”

Keith has no idea what “from the top” entails; he starts from their unfortunate first meeting though, because he knows for fact that Pidge likes all her events in chronological and coherent, detailed order.

Pidge has the same reaction as Shiro for the cheesecake. 

“Aw,” she cooes, “wittle baby Keefy was scared of Wancey-Wance.”

And then she descends into hysterical cackling. “Lance is possibly the  _ least _ intimidating person I know, only because Hunk is terrifying when angry. Lance is such a soft baby. What—” And then she starts fucking laughing again.

At this point, Keith is sick and tired of the teasing and needling over his lack of social skills. When he says,  _ “Stop,” _ it has a little more bite than he intends. He tries to soften it, too late: “Just get back on track.”

“I’m sorry, but that was blackmail gold,” Pidge informs him, completely uncowed. Why does Keith even bother. He can hear her eyes roll over the receiver. “Okay, so — the cheesecake was a fail. What did you do afterwards?”

And then: “You  _ did not,” _ says Pidge. She sounds scandalized.

“What?”

“Oh Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, no wonder he was mad.”

That is not actually helpful. He scowls into the receiver — Pidge calls it his “scares-off-children-and-animals-face” — and nearby a woman looks at him funny. Keith ignores her. _ “Look,” _ he snaps. “Could you just  _ explain _ what I did wrong?”

And then she lays it down, in piercingly clear detail. Hearing about it almost makes him regret asking for her advice, because Pidge tends to the side of no-holds-barred and no-bullshit. When she tells him how unsolicited advice is never welcome, he feels like shrinking. When she points out that Lance was probably pretending those first few days to be  _ polite, _ Keith’s gut sinks to the bottom of his shoes. When she subtly hints at Lance being insecure over his skills — 

“Oh…” Keith says.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Fuck.”

Pige’s tone is grudging. “Well, it’s not as if Lance has been all goody-two shoes either. You two are a trainwreck, oh my God. I cannot believe he yelled at you — I gave him the shovel talk! He has social skills! I expected him to be better than that!  _ Tabarnak,” _ she hisses.

Keith tips his head up and considers the grey, grey sky, wondering about his life decisions. “Well, I pushed him to that by being an idiot. Don’t blame him.”

“I will fucking blame him as much as I want,” snorts Pidge. “He’s a goddamn adult, he has to take responsibility for his decisions just like you.”

“Still —”

“No. Don’t blame yourself for the way he acted. You understand?”

“…Alright.”

“Talk it out,” orders Pidge. 

“I’ll… try.”

She sighs. “Don’t try, just do. And take care of yourself. If anything happens to you, Shiro’s gonna be inconsolable.”

“Yes,” says Keith. “I know.”

“Good.”

He still fails to say anything to Lance, going back into the Palais for the afternoon run, spinning countless conversations through his head before Lance leaves to another studio to practice for some other ballet. He packs up before the next group filters into the studio, biking his way to another gig on the other side of the harbourfront, thinking about Shiro, about Pidge, about Lance.

* * *

_ Clink. _ “I hate him.”

“Lance, we’ve been over this.”

As Hunk pores over his engineering textbook, Lance scrubs extra viciously at the caked-on gunk in the wok. He and Hunk have a deal: Hunk does the cooking, Lance does the dishes. Growing up in a large family with equally large appetites meant résumé-level hours of dishwashing under his belt. Comparatively, the load here is jack shit. It’s almost cathartic, taking the steel wool to the plates and pretending it’s Keith’s godawful face there.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s just. Ugh. Lemme finish these dishes first.”

“Okay.” This is a thing that he he likes about Hunk: he gives Lance space when he really needs it. Lance brandishes his iron wool and starts pretending the stain on a pot is Mullethead’s face.

After the last dish is put away and Lance is collapsed in a miserable heap next to the piles of Hunk’s neatly stacked notes, Hunk speaks. “So.”

They’ve already covered what had happened, that day when Lance had come home quietly fuming, until he exploded the messy details all over the dinner table. Hunk had given his sympathies, had patiently enduring Lance’s bitching for the past week or so, but even Lance could tell that he was beginning to get tired of it.

“So,” he parrots back.

“What happened today?”

Lance grimaces. He doesn’t want to think about the guilt breathing down his neck over all the stress he’s caused Shiro this past week. “Surprise inspection tomorrow. We’re not ready. Part of it… it’s me and. Well.  _ Him. _ Got chewed out by Shiro yesterday, too. We deserved it. We’re still being pissy. Life sucks, is all.”

Hunk leans back in his chair, heavy with study-exhaustion. “Talk to him.”

“What? No!”

“Dude, I’m serious here. Hold a legit  _ conversation _ with him. Clearly you two have issues. Just sort them out without, y’know, screaming at him at the end of practice. Guaranteed to have better results.”

Lance stares at him like he grew a third head. “He hates me even more than I hate him, Hunk. It’s like asking me to go up to a rabid bear. End result is the same: I’m gonna get mauled.”

“Are you going to die or be set on fire?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be melodramatic, man.”

“This is not melodrama. This is a perfectly reasonable response.”

For just a moment, Hunk puts his head on his engineering textbook. “Okay,” he says, levering his head back up. “Consider this: you can get kicked out of the company, Shiro could get in hot water, since you’re his understudy, and both you and Keith’ll both remain miserable until you resolve your differences. Does  _ that _ sound like a perfectly reasonable response?” To top it off, he raises one unimpressed eyebrow at Lance, then turns back to the complicated diagrams splayed out on their table.

“…okay, point,” Lance concedes. 

“Look, you’re not gonna be mauled, bro. If you can’t work together it’s gonna just be a lot worse, and fine, maybe you don’t like him. I have people I don’t like too! But this is a lot bigger than that. Just get your shit together for the inspection, I promise you won’t die in a fire. Just  _ talk to him. _ That’s all the advice I’m willing to give on this issue.” 

* * *

So the next morning, Lance goes to talk to Keith.

It is chilly November weather. The sky is a surprising shade of periwinkle blue, the sun a pale spot in the east, shining on the chrome and glass of the waterfront offices. It’s a contrast to the grey drizzle Toronto is known for by the time November rolls around. Lance is wearing his favourite jacket and scarf, a pair of scuffed boots, and an alarming grip on his practice bag. Okay, he reminds himself, ducking into the Palais, the worst that can happen is being mauled or set on fire, neither of which is going to happen.

Great.

Keith is parked right outside the entrance, dismounting his stupid red bike and shucking off his helmet. Lance knows the moment he’s been sighted, because Keith stills, and turns. It’s a deliberate turn. He tucks his helmet under his arm. 

“Yo,” says Lance. “So. Uh.” And somehow, every single one of the conversation starters that he had thought of on the bus dissipate. Trying to dispel the sudden awkward pall over the air, he asks, “How’s it hanging?”

“…Alright,” says Keith, very slowly.

“Great. Um, me and my roomie. Uh.” He flounders a bit. Opens his mouth. Closes it.

Keith starts: “I—” and trails off.

They stare at one another mutely.

“So I just wanted—”

“I’m sorry about—”

“Oh okay you talk—”

“Shoot sorry go ahead—”

Lance puts his face in his hands. “No. No, let’s not do the Canadian Standoff. This is awkward enough already.”

Keith huffs what might be a little laugh, lip curling up. Ice: successfully broken. Point one to Lance.

“Yeah,” says Keith. “It’s…” He puts his hands into his pockets, and then, looking uncomfortable but determined, says, “Look man, I’m really sorry. Um. I talked it over with my friend and she pointed out how I messed up. I wanted to do something nice back as thanks for the brownies, but it backfired. Badly.” He pauses again. “Um. It was supposed to be cheesecake? Originally. From Uncle Tetsu’s. But I felt uh. Felt really awkward about it and just. Couldn’t do it. And then I. Said stuff. Tried advice. Wasn’t good. So. Yeah. Sorry.”

“Uh,” says Lance. Cheesecake? Cheesecake. Way to make a guy feel guilty. “No. It’s, uh, fine. For the record, I’m sorry too. The yelling was not my best moment. I don’t lose my temper often. So.”

“Yeah, I heard. Sorry for setting you off like that.”

“So… you wanna. Uh. We gotta work on our stuff really hard today. We definitely haven’t been pulling out A-game these past few days. I know that I don’t want to put more stress on Shiro’s shoulders, what with the inspection being today. So. Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Truce?”

“Yeah.”

Lance hoists up his bag. “And… uh. Now I gotta go change.”

“You do that,” says Keith.

“Okay.”

Well, that went a lot better than Lance had hoped for.

The next few minutes are just like, awkward, running that actually terrible conversation through his head. But hey! No one got hurt! Or set on fire! And Keith had apologized, which had admittedly not been on Lance’s itinerary. He feels really really light walking into the practice room, going through his stretches. When practice starts, Lance is already in the zone.

He corrects all the bad form that had creeped into his posture while he was stupidly distracted by Keith, tightening his relevés and adjusting himself relentlessly to the swaying beat of  _ A Maiden’s Prayer. _ He smoothly transitions into the real practice. Ironically, he notes that Keith’s advice was actually pretty good. He adjusts his rhythm and keeps going.

The music matches his tempo; starting slow, testing, and then gradually picking up. He catches Keith’s eye where he’s sitting behind the baby grand. Lance nods, almost minutely, and the speed picks up just as Lance finishes his last relevé. 

There’s a easy, simple calm in Lance’s mind. The lights and the walls and the other dancers fade. It’s just him and the music, now.

Lunch break hits at eleven thirty sharp, and he catches Shiro giving him a smile as he walks out to grab a celebratory bowl of ramen. It’s a weekday, so there’s no line. Lance squeezes into a sidestall, orders, and then finishes the beautiful, beautiful bowl of noodles, egg, and pork in fifteen minutes. On his way back, wrapped up in the snug embrace of a good mood, he calls Hunk, informs him of the excellent, excellent news, and then — yeah. The inspection’s today.

Lance has no idea when the studio inspectors are actually coming. Sometime between two and six, probably. He manages to catch another hour of practice — good practice, good music, laser-concentrated focus — and at three thirty on the dot, Klaizap escorts two people inside.

The inspector is a tall, broad man, with possibly the most atrocious haircut Lance has ever seen in his life. It’s as if the Wolverine’s hairdo made love to a shag rug and the hideous baby had been combed back with a litre of gel. His sideburns are massive. He’s got pasty skin, narrow eyes of some shade of muddy gold, and walks in with an air of condescension that makes Lance want to trip him.

His assistant is reedy and sallow-faced, with a jackknife nose and a short-shorn cut. He looks like an asshole. Both of them are in polished suits with a little purple logo pinned to their lapels. Lance doesn’t trust either of them, and that doubles as soon as the inspector opens his mouth.

“Mr. Shirogane. A pleasure,” he purrs, and the hair on the back of Lance’s neck stands on end. How Shiro manages to smile without a hint of insincerity showing is beyond him, but he pulls through.

“Mr. Sendak, sir, I can assure you that the pleasure’s mine. Mr. Haxus,” he says with a cordial nod to the assistant. “This is the professional class for the Palais des Léons Company. As you know, these are the actual performers for our productions. The afternoon rehearsals are just underway. If you would follow me, please…”

Lance trades a look with Keith — camaraderie! Sort of. In any case it’s comrades in mutual distaste; Lance makes a face, and Keith’s eyebrows pinch. He jerks his head towards Sendak and mouths something Lance can’t make out.

_ What? _ mouths Lance.

_ Are you ready? _ Keith mouths back.

_ Hope so. _ He punctuates his response with a shrug.

Well… Ready or not: time to do this thing.

Shiro sends Sendak to the back, to a cluster of benches that give a direct line of sight to the rest of the room, and then the music picks up. 

The tension is clear in the room. Technically this is just a rehearsal inspection — which is to say, they’re evaluating the general productivity and quality of the dancers during practice and not an actual performance. But Lance is, right now, very keenly aware of his position as Shiro’s understudy, and also his uh, really freaking lackluster performance for the past week. They’re separated into groups, always have been for practice. The select dancers twirl  _ en pointe _ and lift their feet as they perform their roles, their movements neat and perfect. As Lance watches Plaxum bound into the centre for her entrance, he notices Sendak raise his eyebrows in some unreadable expression. Whether it’ll spell disaster for the company or not is a mystery.

Lance licks his lips. He hears Shiro cue in his group to move to the centre and rehearse.

Okay. He can do this. 

He thinks he can feel Sendak’s eyes on him. Probably not directly on him, but in his general direction and quarter, because it is his group dancing. Lance focuses very pointedly on the particularities of his motions: he is not going get stage fright from, like, a routine — actually not very routine — inspection. 

Maybe he’s getting stage fright from a non-routine inspection. 

His nerves are tingling, static electricity just underneath his skin, and Lance is hyper aware of every movement he makes, every twitch and shift of balance as he goes through the routine. Okay, so there are things hanging on this performance — like his reputation, and Shiro’s reputation, and the company’s reputation. Important things. He keeps his breathing even. It’s a good thing Lance has always worked better under pressure. 

Keith’s music pounds through the studio.

Lance spins, posture perfect. Okay. He can do this. He can totally do this.

The trick, Lance knows, is not to think too hard about it.

Lance knows this routine. He’s practiced it, over and over. He’s polished his jumps and his spins until they came out perfect. His muscles know it and his fingers know it, the exact flick of his wrist, the timing down to the second. The trick is to let his his body take over. Lance needs his brain to convey the  _ emotion. _

_ Swan Lake _ is a lovely ballet, masterfully composed, and today there’s an energy to the music, some huge and swelling tension behind the keystrokes, hitting octaves in cascading crescendos. Keith is on a roll. Lance feels it in a pound through his ears, sound and vibration, cells knocking against one another. It makes his leaps higher, makes each step light and clean and sharp.

Good.

He feels hyperaware and yet not at all aware of the flow of the music. He feels the passage of time, mentally ticks down the minutes until the end of the song. There are only three things: himself, the music, and the movements of the other dancers. Spin, jump, twist. They’re close, now. There’s a low, drawn note, and then the music peters off.

Performance calm leaves him in bits and lagging pieces. It’s always like this, after a particularly intense session. Tunnel vision is great, but it takes a while for Lance to, you know, function in a more non-ballet sense. Like remembering that walls and ceilings and other people exist. 

Perspiration trickles down his neck. His muscles are trembling, fine enough for Lance to feel but not enough for anyone else to see. The echo of the music is a receding drum in his head. Lance licks his lips. Neither him nor Keith had gotten distracted this time. The tempo was perfect. Lance’s movements were calm, precise. He knows this.

His heart is pounding anyway, coming down from adrenaline high, and from the corner of his eye, Lance takes a glance at Shiro.

Aaaaaaaand okay. Awesome. Shiro is smiling. That automatically spells good things. Lance allows himself to grin right back. And then, because they didn’t accidentally destroy everyone’s focus by being shitheads, go them, he turns to look at Keith.

The pianist is watching Sendak and Haxus murmur, his expression unreadable. With the rest of the dancers, Lance moves to stand at the walls.

“Hey, Plax,” he says, holding up a fist, “great work!”

Plaxum beams back and bumps him. “Thanks Lance! You did really good, too!” She twists her mouth, pensive. “Did you and the piano guy make up or something? You didn’t even snip at each other, like, once.”

“Something like that.”

He looks over to where Keith is packing up his scores, and feels compelled to go over — the awkwardness from this morning is taking over again, now that the threat of inspection has blown over. Lance would have put his hands into his pockets, but he doesn’t have any. 

He stands there. He’s not sure what to say.  _ Hi? I’m very sorry I was an ass for the past week but apparently our respective communication skills are shit? And you were also an asshole, so uh, not that sorry. _ Both of them already apologized, sort of. He’s not really sure how to address/ignore the week of relentless hostility.

And then a thought comes over him, kinda like a really late lightbulb of revelation. 

“Hey, Keith. You know Pidge, right?”

“Uh. Yeah, she was —”

He pauses.

His expression twitches.

“Ahhh… Ah. That. You — That… explains a lot. She mentioned ‘counselling the other half’ of our ‘disaster show’. I’m uh, kinda sorry, but she’s uh. Kind of mad at you? At me too, but I was already yelled at.”

Lance… cannot believe he forgot about Pidge. Or maybe he was just repressing that, shoot, because — “Oh, jeez. She’s really gonna rip me a new one.” There’s gonna be a chew-out-Lance talk in the near future,  _ shoot. _

“Yeah, she’s kind of terrifying.”

The two of them share a commiserating look. At least they have some common ground here. Then the awkward comes over them again, and they avert their eyes in silence. The other dancers are giving them a wide berth as they filter out.

Lance raises a hand. “Alright, so… see you tomorrow?” He tries for a smile, feeling facial muscles stretch, and yeah, it’s awkward, it is, but then Keith blinks, and there’s surprise in his voice when he says:

“Yeah, sure.”

Step one for not being an asshole? 

Lance step-shuffles awkwardly, gives a little wave, and trots to the doors.

It’s sunset time, the early kind that comes with winter, a clear mauve that fades to pink on the horizon. He bundles himself up into his coat and scarf, pushing past double doors to the bus-stop, and sees the flash of red as Keith turns on the road, motorcycle roaring, and disappears into the traffic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kkachi: in which awkward happens. at least they’re not fighting?
> 
> Cyan: This was certainly a lot more awkward than our original draft, but also hopefully more realistic.
> 
> kkachi: oh god. the Original Drafts.
> 
> Cyan: … Did we ever mention how long this project’s been ongoing? Because it’s been a while. 
> 
> kkachi: i think we already have. now it’s been more than a year. jeez. i’m glad we rewrote it, though.
> 
> Cyan: Reading the original drafts is a revelation and a cringe at once — good content, good writing, pacing could be better.
> 
> kkachi: our dark past aside, thank you for coming back for a fourth helping of the Dancer Lance and Emo Keith Show. your comments, kudos, and criticisms give us life while we slog through school.
> 
> Cyan: Enjoy the new chapter and let us know what you liked and what you didn’t!
> 
> (kkachi: also obligatory 4/13 homestuck joke)


	5. Entracte I, Scene I

Keith is five when he loses his parents.

He doesn’t remember much about them. His mother: she’d had long dark hair and she used to read to him, picture books curled up in bed, taking Keith’s hand and letting him tap his fingers against the words. His father: making pancakes in the morning on lazy Saturdays, who had smelled of smoke and car oil. Keith thinks he can still recall the husky thunder of his laugh.

He’s five when he comes to in a hospital bed. He remembers that moment, clear as light off crystal. The halogen lights. The pale green walls. The smell of hand soap. In retrospect, it was homey for a hospital room, but of course it would be: Keith was five years old. But in that snapshot of that moment all there is is waking up in an unfamiliar place thinking: _not home not mom wrong wrong wrong._

And then the nurse comes. She is wearing green scrubs — Keith will remember that colour, the green walls and the green scrubs. And she tells him: his parents are dead.

His parents are dead because there was a car crash. He barely remembers it: he can only recall a high-pitched screech, asphalt shredding tires. He blinks, slow and uncomprehending. It’s only until days later, when the IV stuck in his arm is taken out and his parents aren’t there to hug the pain away, that he realizes that they’re gone, really gone, never coming back to him. He cries much harder than the needle warrants.

Here is what the nurse doesn’t tell him. What no one tells him, until the social worker, is that his parents are dead and no one else will take him in. Both his parents were first generation immigrants. Keith doesn’t have any other family, certainly not in the country.

So Keith is discharged from the hospital and the social worker brings him back to the apartment — it’s only been a week, the lease is still ongoing — and he picks up his favourite toys and his father’s journal, his mother’s clarinet, the family photo album. They’re small, precious things. Keith’s family had been poor and didn’t have much. None of that had ever mattered to Keith in the way it never matters to most five year olds. It still doesn’t matter, except that now his parents are dead.

He gets put into the system.

The system is terrible.

His social worker ferries him from foster homes, to group homes, to orphanages. Keith turns six in the foster home that has six other kids stuck in a squat two-story; he turns seven in the foster home that only ever buys him seven-dollar Walmart clothes when he _knows_ there’s a stipend, eight in a group home (that wasn’t too bad, he’d had cake and a present and everything), ten in an orphanage. He drags along his father’s journal and his mother’s clarinet and the family photo album in a beat-up second-hand backpack. He learns to walk with his shoulders back and his chin high, to smile with teeth and nothing else, to show indifference because apathy is strength as much as anger is. He goes through foster homes the way other kids go through Halloween candy.

He’s angry. He’s angry all the time and somewhere between home five and eight he learns to throw a punch and take a black eye. And that’s when he starts becoming a _problem:_ fights with the other children, refusing to come out of the closet, blank-eyed stares at adults who are not his parents. Written on his file: _anger management issues, violent: therapy recommended._ No one wants to adopt an antisocial five-year old, six-year old, eleven-year old with a disciplinary rapsheet the length of his arm.

No foster system in the world is actually ready for the kids. Canada’s is no different. Edmonton’s is no different. Too many kids, not enough families, underfunded from the government.

And Keith is always, always angry.

* * *

His social worker brings him to another goddamn house at the beginning of summer break. It’s an everyday picture of suburban bliss, complete with a neat green lawn and pristine driveway. He already hates it. Keith can’t wait until he’s sixteen, can’t wait until he can file for emancipation and get the hell out of this shithole. He doesn’t want to stay with another weepy-eyed pair of parents or their snot-nosed little spawn until they realize that they can’t “handle a child like this.” Then again, the authoritarian ones are worse: he had one last year that made the kids in their group home wear starched high-collar shirts, kept on a strict rotation of chores and Bible study. He couldn’t even bring out his Walkman in that house. The ones that don’t give a shit are the best; if they don’t have children, even better. Keith can listen to whatever he wants, can skip school to walk to the quieter parks and spend the day there, lounging in a tree.

The ones that hit are the worst. He only had one of those for two weeks before he caused enough trouble to get kicked out. They hit, but he’s fast. He made it out alive. He’s one of the lucky ones, because they got _caught._

He hopes those fuckers die in a fire.

Three sharp raps on the etched-glass door. There’s a quiet “one second!” before a slightly pimply Asian teen greets him. Keith assesses him; he’s broad and wide, with calves built like a brick shithouse. He’d have to be fast if he wants to take him, but his face is unguarded, soft. Looks like he’s never been in a fight in his life. The guy smiles like a teenaged Prince Charming, holding out his hand.

“Hey. Keith, right?”

Keith gives him one narrow-eyed side glance. “Whatever,” he says, just enough teeth to be a snarl, and shoves past him into the house. White walls, good furniture, glimpse of a kitchen that looks like it came from an Ikea home set — yeah, Keith knows these types. He hauls ass up the flight of stairs right inside the foyer — that’s where they always keep the bedrooms — picks out the empty room out of the bunch, and slams the door shut. Faintly, he can hear, “Uh, you have to take off your shoes?”

He ignores the guy in favour of looking around the room. A bed against the wall. A decently sized window, looking out to the backyard. One of those fancier closets with mirrors on the doors. A nightstand, drawer, and bookshelf, all in the same nondescript white paint. It feels like it’s meant to be filled.

They’re probably a well-off, well-meaning family. Too bad they’ll get sick of him in a month. It’d be useless to try to be good, anyways; they never take him once they realize how much work he is. He flops down on the clean white sheets, shoes still on, dirt marring the surface. Keith takes out his music and plugs in.

* * *

Later on that day, there’s a tentative knock. “Keith? I’m your foster mother. I’m going to open the door.”

He ignores her. A few seconds later, a kindly looking middle-aged lady peers through the doorway. Her hair is dark, with gray streaks, cut into a neat bob, and she wears a soft purple sweater. There’s a shiny vacuum cleaner propped against her hip. He pops out an earbud just in time to hear her ask, “May I come in?”

What kind of question is that? Although, yeah, they’re the polite kind, aren’t they? Keith would really not have her come in, though this technically this is her house. He wonders if he can get away with saying “no.” Dogging the heels of that thought, he tries calculating how long this soft-looking woman might allow Keith’s continuous string of “no”s to gestate before ignoring personal boundaries.

The answer is two seconds, because before Keith can open his mouth she hauls a vacuum cleaner into the room, plugs it in, and cleans the dirt that his shoes left on the hardwood.

Eventually, she reaches his bed. “Keith, please take off your shoes.”

He considers this. “Nah.”

A sigh. He stares at her. She stares right back with her piercing gray eyes.

Then, in two swift motions, she yanks his shoes off before he can even react. She lifts his legs, yanks away the upper sheet, and puts him right back down. He can only blink stupidly. How the _hell_ —

The lady is _smiling,_ sheet fisted against her left hip, his shoes against her right, but her eyes are steely. They convey more “don’t pull that bullshit with me mister” than he’s ever seen in his life. Then, she walks over to unplug the vacuum cleaner, somehow hauls that up despite having her hands full, and walks out the door.

He blinks. Once. Twice. Three times. He gets the distinct feeling that he was just _handled._ Embarrassment hits him, and then anger. He stalks over to slam the door shut, stubs his toe when he does, and hops back to his bed in defeat.

* * *

He keeps his door locked for the remainder of the day; no one comes up and unlocks it, although at dinner time the lady comes knocking again and cheerily tells him that dinner is ready, and then sometime again near eight o’clock there’s a series of footsteps that stop just short of Keith’s door and dither quietly before removing itself. The next morning Keith wakes up sometime at eight, unlocks his door, and then rummages around the new kitchen for breakfast. Presumably the adults are at work.

At eight-fifteen the teenage son comes downstairs — summer vacation means no school — and seats himself across from Keith.

“Um, I never got the chance to introduce myself. I’m Takashi.”

Keith looks up from the Cheerios swimming in his bowl at the guy across the table. The guy — Takashi — meets his blank stare. Man, what is _up_ with this weirdo family? They usually just look away awkwardly after the first few seconds.

Takashi raises an eyebrow. “You know, people usually say stuff like ‘Nice to meet you’ or whatever.”

“It’s not nice meeting you,” Keith says.

“It wasn’t nice meeting you, either, but at least I didn’t comment on it,” Takashi says back without missing a beat.

Keith narrows his eyes. “You look like a wannabe Bruce Lee, except you’d cry if someone poked you in the wrong place.”

“Ooh. Wow. That one really hurt. Look. You’ve injured my wittle feewings.” Takashi leans forward on his elbows and gives him a shiteating grin. “Not bad for a _kindergartener.”_

Getting kicked out of a foster home after a day would, admittedly, be a record even for Keith, so with effort he reels in the urge to lean across and sock the guy in the face. Very deliberately, he gives his best snarl as he tips his bowl onto the table. A waterfall of Cheerios and milk spill onto the tablecloth and dribble onto the lap of the smug shitbag named Takashi Shirogane.

He leaves the bowl there and scrapes back his chair with a shriek, shoulders hiked and so ready to go back to his room — this is why he hates _people_ — and suddenly he finds that he can’t move: a strong hand is gripping his shoulder.

He freezes, suddenly terrified. He thought this house was a nice one —

“Noooooooo way. You do not get to act like a spoiled brat half your age and not clean up after your own mess.” Takashi’s voice, mild and calm, sounds somewhere above and to the left. Another hand gently turns Keith back to the table and nudges him in the small of his back. Gradually, Keith unfreezes, taking in the mess he made of the table. Milk drips on the ground in quiet plinks. Suddenly, there’s a tap on his shoulder; Keith shrieks a little, covers his mouth too late to stifle it, only to find Takashi holding out a roll of paper towels.

His eyes are kind as he says, “Take this. I’ll help clean up, if you want. Sorry for startling you.”

They clean up the table in silence.

* * *

The next month continues along this vein: Keith gets angry, and then the Shiroganes deal with his bullshit with grace, kindness, or shit-eatingness. Or some combination of all three.

Mr. Shirogane is a gentle, soft-eyed man for his tall stature. He has a squarish face, worn away by age, and gray streaks at his temples. He tends to a prolific garden in the backyard and keeps little pots around the house: thick-leaved jade plants, sprawling pothos, chains of spider plants that he says clean the air. Occasionally, on days when Keith is a marginally more tolerable piece of shit, he gives Keith little fruit candies and ruffles his hair. Oddly, Keith can’t bring himself to feel angry at the hair ruffles.

Saturday morning, Keith wakes up to the sound of thunder, feeling twitchy in his bones. He’s silent through breakfast, through doing the dishes with Takashi, through trying to go back to his room to shut himself in his closet and listen to his music until he stops feeling like he’s spiralling into some unknowable void.

But Mr. Shirogane blocks the staircase. “Keith,” he says, concern in his eyes, “are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he says shortly. He walks towards the staircase, eyes firmly on the banister. _Don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me please._

Mr. Shirogane touches his shoulder. “Keith—”

Something snaps. “Leave me _alone!”_

Before he realizes what he’s doing, Keith knocks over the pot, breathing hard, watching the branches fall off and the porcelain shatter. The shattering sound it makes echoes through the entire house. Keith’s hands are shaking as he looks at Mr. Shirogane’s prize jade plant on the ground, the pieces of porcelain and rock and soil burst around his feet like a dying star.

A thunder of footsteps. _“Otou-san,_ are you—” Takashi stops before he steps on any shards, and sticks his arm out to keep his mother from entering.

Silence. Keith’s hands keep shaking. He can’t look at Mr. Shirogane.

“Keith, look at me.”

He shakes his head, hard.

“Son. I’m not mad about the plant. Look at me.”

He wrenches his eyes shut. The words spill out before he’s conscious of them. “Why are you people so _nice_ to me?”

Because he had realized, somewhere along the line, that an insidious hope had started to take root: that maybe he found a home. Maybe, the Shiroganes, with their incredible patience, would’ve taken him in. Maybe he finally found someplace safe.

And there was something more terrifying about breaking out of the miserable cycle of his life than even the worst foster home.

And then the tears start falling. His face gets weak and loose with snot. He feels exposed, standing on the clean tile of the foyer, like a dirty spot on white sheets.

There’s a quiet shuffling sound. It takes him a second before he realizes that someone’s clearing away the dirt and porcelain. Suddenly, he’s pressed against a warm chest, two arms around his head, tears soaking into the dark navy of Mr. Shirogane’s shirt. Soon, two more warm bodies envelop him.

It’s a long time before they let go.

* * *

And then, Keith finds the piano.

He’d ignored it the first time he’d entered the living room, with it’s pristine red covering over the keys, sitting half-shadowed in afternoon sunlight, in favour of the cassettes in one of the bookshelf drawers. Keith was disappointed to find they weren’t any bands he liked, and then he had avoided the room like the plague.

After he had shattered the pot, though (and helped Mr. Shirogane propagate the plant fragments), Keith started wandering in to peruse the books or to lounge in a chair to listen to his music. But the summer days got boring. A week after the incident, slung feet-up head-down off the edge of the couch, he asked Takashi:

“So, you know how to play that thing or whatever?”

“Yeah,” he replied, poring over a copy of _Hamlet,_ “but it’s been a while. I’m pretty rusty. Kinda stopped after I made it into ballet school.”

Keith stares blankly up at the ceiling. Takashi apparently goes to some fancy ballet school — company? whatever — and is really good. As in “wins awards and accolades” kind of good. Explains why he’s so jacked, anyways. Apparently it’s his summer break, but he still goes out to the studio to practice. Sometimes, Keith would walk into the basement to find Takashi in exercise clothes, doing stretches at a wooden bar. The one time Keith made a joke about it — some immature rib about guys dancing — Takashi had given him a stare so flat and unimpressed, Keith had bowed his head and slunk out of the room.

Keith looks at the shiny black piano.

“Can I try playing it?”

Takashi raises an eyebrow, though he doesn’t look up from his book. “Go ahead. I can show you the ropes if you like, just don’t set the thing on fire. Or spill cereal on it.”

Keith groans, kicking his feet against the cushions. “Will you stop bringing that up?” He is very aware that he does, in fact, sound exactly like a whiny kindergartener. He does not give two shits.

“No, I won’t stop bringing it up.”

Instead of dignifying Takashi’s snark with a response, Keith awkwardly crab-walks his legs down, gets up, and stalks to the piano. He scrunches up the red cloth, unsure of where to put it, so he just lets it flop around on top of the piano. Pulling out the piano bench, he scoots around and seats himself somewhere near the middle.

He assesses the keys, the layout. Somewhere, in the back of his head, his mother’s clarinet comes to mind: the sound, the patterns. His cassettes. His father’s voice, clear and rich, quietly singing some old song in Korean.

Something _sings_ when he presses that first, centre key and hears the note.

And suddenly ravenous for something indescribable, Keith plays another key.

Soon, Keith is asking Takashi about how to place his hands, how to play with two hands at once like he’s seen others do, and eventually Takashi takes out his old piano books. Keith bears the overly cutesy drawings in favour of focusing on the simplistic tunes, and then suddenly he can hear the chords, hear the sounds behind the notes. His brain puts it together with a fluid ease unlike anything else in his life. The positioning of his hands, too. All Keith needs to do to fit together the puzzle pieces is to think of the music in his head, and suddenly it feels like a path is laid out before him; how to lay his fingers, how sharp, how fast.

Granted, it takes practice. Learning how to move his hands independently is frustrating. Really, ridiculously frustrating. Motor skills in humans don’t develop like that by themselves; they have to be trained, over long periods of time, with intent. But Keith has stubbornness in spades. Instead of holing himself up in his room or a closet, he practices, enraptured by the sound of the piano.

And it’s amazing and wonderful, even when it’s absurdly frustrating. Keith has known music all his life, breathed it, found solace in it, remembers it from his earliest memories (and maybe that’s why it’s such a comfort — his mother’s clarinet and his father’s singing voice). His tapes spill jazz and rock and opera, and he knows the way the notes are supposed to be strung, something like bone-deep instinct or just long, long hours unconsciously fine-tuning his ear. It’s like — a story, or a picture, except it’s a song. He’s never been good at writing or art but no one’s ever given him music lessons apart from fourth grade freaking recorder, and now that there’s a method it’s like getting pencil and paper, or a typewriter, or whatever a tool is in this metaphor. He has a way and he knows the song and it’s so _easy._

It’s bizarre, Takashi tells him, how fast Keith is learning. Within two weeks Keith tears through all the basic exercise books and moves on to greener pastures labelled Level One as Shiro readies himself to go back to school.

He starts going to the piano when he’s angry, or frustrated, or when bad memories swell up like bile. He starts playing when he’s sad, or ecstatic, or bored. Every time he practices, he feels his insides unknot, string by string.

In Keith’s room, kept in a solid plastic pot, a new jade plant is growing on his windowsill.

* * *

Adoption papers process slowly. Somewhere between sleepy Sunday morning breakfasts and having Mr. Shirogane’s steady hand helping him learn how to pull weeds in the August heat, there is a silent agreement that Keith is staying. The Shiroganes ask him anyways, because they’re polite like that,  but they all already know the answer. It doesn’t stop the hugs, which are abundant, a tight squeeze, warmth and lemon detergent, but that’s something Keith can live with.

Somehow though, none of it prepares him for when the finalized adoption papers actually land on the kitchen table one morning with Mr. Shirogane’s daily crossword puzzle, Mrs. Shirogane’s casefiles, two cups of coffee and a melange of toast, oatmeal, and cereal with fruit. The thick orange envelope, packed with papers and stamped with red ink, feels like it came out of a fever dream.

“Keith.” Mrs. Shirogane — _Mom,_ now — smiles at him. She is cupping coffee between the palms of her hands; her hair curls over her shoulders, dark, and Keith knows the edges of her smile now, months and months later. “Open the envelope.”

Keith can’t help it. His approach is cautious, like he’s approaching a wild animal instead of dead paper. He feels like a single wrong movement and it will rip and dissipate.

There is glue on the envelope edge. He opens it up, and gingerly ekes the sheets out onto the table.

The words CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION blur very quickly as the Shiroganes — _his family_ — scrape back their chairs and converge to smother him.

* * *

Mrs. Shirogane, surprisingly, cannot bake, but Mr. Shirogane makes the best brownies, which is what happens after the hug and Shiro yelling loud enough to wake the neighbourhood. The adoption papers are strewn across the breakfast table — not forgotten but, well, sort of forgotten in favour of the celebration.

Mr. Shirogane is grinning. Mrs. Shirogane is smiling, edges curled, eyes soft, and Shiro is still yelling like a crazy person and trying to strangle Keith in a hug even with the smell of chocolate in the air.

The day passes in that kind of fashion: Keith feeling giddy enough to be dizzy, the Shiroganes crowding him. Shiro, with one arm slung like a constant around Keith’s shoulders as they do lazy, Sunday things like movies and popcorn and pruning of the young maples out in the backyard. For lunch they go out to a cozy little diner just around the corner, where Keith gets full range of the menu and cake as if it’s his birthday even when it’s not. And then dinner, somehow even more resplendent, with huge portions of all his favourite foods: chocolate chile tacos and thick chewy noodles in black bean sauce — jjajangmyeon — and a spicy, nutty tea.

Keith moves through it all like it’s a dream, just experiencing, not really thinking. He does elbow himself into doing the dishes though — despite Shiro’s vocal protests, Shiro _hates_ doing the dishes — but it’s not until afterwards, when the streetlamps are on outside, a dim yellow glow, the sky gone a deep, dark blue-purple edged in lavender, and Mrs. Shirogane pulls him aside, that he feels himself slip back and breathe.

They sit in the backyard, on the steps leading to the lush tangle of plants Mr. Shirogane has planted, vegetables and and fruits and the maples red with summer, shaded in evening colours. Overhead, the sky is filled with punch-out stars. The wind ruffles Keith’s collar. One pale luminary cloud ghosts over the shining moon.

Mrs. Shirogane touches his shoulder. It’s a soft touch.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Keith blinks at her.

“I,” he says, and stops. _I’m great,_ he wants to say. _I’m fine. I’m adopted, finally. I’m —_

He’s so happy. He’s so deliriously, giddily happy and has been, this entire day, to the point his arms and legs have been on a seeming autopilot almost. And now —

And now he feels abruptly exhausted.

“It’ll be okay,” she says. Her smile is as warm as the summer evening. “It’s a lot to take in. Take your time processing everything. We’re here for you.”

He looks at her. She’s wearing a blue blouse, a little stained at the cuff from where a bit of taco filling had smeared. Her hair is up. There are fine lines around her eyes that crease when she smiles. And Keith believes her, when she says it, that it’ll be okay. He can’t remember the last time he believed.

But he believes her. He believes her because the first day she took him into her house she’d been as no nonsense with him as anyone ever was, yanked his shoes right off and walked out of the door with vacuum cleaner in hand. Because she sings when she cleans, and her case work scatters across the counters of the house the same way Mr. Shirogane’s jade plants do, colourmarked and constant, and she’d made him a hundred dinners and a hundred breakfasts and a hundred lunches, never yelled at him and always did her best. Keith knows her, and Keith knows her, the soft press of her hands, the way she smiles, the same way he knows the concentrated furrow of Mr. Shirogane’s hands as he waters his flowers, the same way he knows Mr. Shirogane’s rolling laugh, and he _believes._

“We’re here for you,” she repeats, soft, the light of the streetlamps haloing her dark hair, and Keith swallows.

He says: “I know.”

* * *

School, unfortunately, is a thing. He’s enrolled in the nearby elementary school, keeping his head low and his mouth shut. Now that he has a family, he doesn’t want to get them in trouble. For once, the teacher’s only remark is about how _quiet_ he is. How _studious_ he is. It surprises him, how easy good behaviour actually is when he puts his mind to it.

It’s a weird feeling.

The next surprise is when Mom, watching him play through Level Two, asks him: “Keith, would you like piano lessons?”

“…Eh?”

She laughs at that. “Do you want piano lessons?”

Somewhere else in the house, Takashi hollers, “GO FOR IT! YOU SOUND GREAT ALREADY!” Keith’s ears burn red with the sudden praise.

He wants… does he want piano lessons? Actual instruction for music. He remembers his mother’s clarinet, his father’s cassette tapes — that string of connection is dulling with time and his newfound family, but it still tugs in the space between his ribs, insistent. And even beyond that, he wants to play the piano. It’s something he’s good at. It’s something he feels giddy doing.

“Yeah,” he says, “I think I do,” and watches Mom thunk down a phone directory.

So two weeks later, five o’ clock on Wednesday afternoon, he knocks on the door of a large, expansive mansion with Mom by his side. The door opens to a silver-haired man with a regal beard. He wears sharp slacks and a warm smile when he greets them. He shakes Mrs. Shirogane’s hand with a nod, then turns to him.

“Hello,” he says. “I’m Mr. Alfor de Altea, your piano teacher, but you can call me Mr. Alfor. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Keith.” He holds his hand out for Keith to shake. Keith takes it.

Piano lessons with Mr. Alfor are brilliant and frustrating and everything Keith ever wanted. Compared to the monotony of solving linear equations or reading articles, it’s a dream come true. Keith’s elementary school doesn’t have a music program — its arts program is gutted as is — so he finds himself looking forward to every Wednesday, and chatters happily to Mom or Dad or Takashi on the way back, depending on who drives him. He skips past some of the easier levels, practices scales until he almost falls off the piano bench in fits of frustration, and learns song after song after song. Mr. Alfor teaches him theory, too: intervals and chord patterns and a host of other things.

He loves every minute of it, throws himself into it with passion that he didn’t even know he had. Past Keith, festering in his own toxic anger, is a memory compared to music. As his music matures and shapes itself, as his skills are honed, he feels like something is filling him up, head to toe.

Months into his lessons with Mr. Alfor, his teacher brings up a proposal after he finishes the latest song in his repertoire.

“Keith,” he begins. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Hmm?”

Alfor begins to pace slightly. He always teaches standing up, despite his advancing age. “I know that you’ll soon be applying for high school. There is an arts school that I myself attended when I was your age. It has several campuses, each specializing in a certain artistic discipline. My daughter is actually attending the dance school for ballet — she’s a year or two older than you, I believe. I think you would flourish there, in the music school.” He stands and looks at Keith. “It’s called the Garrison Academy of the Arts.”

Keith’s eyes go wide. He’s heard of it, hearing the occasional mention at school. It’s prestigious. Competitive. Private. And _expensive._

Alfor puts a hand on his shoulder, supporting and comforting. “I’ve heard you play and improve immensely. Young man, you are blessed with talent. I believe that you can secure the scholarship. Your musical ability deserves to be heard.”

* * *

So Keith practices.

He brings it up to Mom and Dad, looking up the audition information. Mr. Alfor had given him eight months' worth of time to practice the required repertoire, polish it, and practice himself for the entrance exam. The Garrison isn’t only a prestigious institute for the arts; it also prides itself on education across the board. And while Keith feels no fire for science or math, he can appreciate their standards.

He practices as he always does: like a man (or tween, in his case) possessed. He studies music history for the first time. Keith would like to believe that there is a special place in hell for whoever designed the exam with so many dates, but Mr. Alfor teaches the _story_ behind the music: how the songs reflected the conditions of the era, from the deeply religious chorals to the tongue-in-cheek origins of ragtime. And Keith has always had an uncanny knack for memorization, so it’s not as bad as it could have been.

With help from Shiro, Keith studies. His desk fills up with staff paper, lined paper, pens, pencils. Posters of his favourite musicians go up on the walls, along with some of his favourite sheet music pieces. Oscar Peterson sits next to The Jackson Five sits next to Guns N’ Roses sits next to Yo-Yo Ma. Somehow, Shiro carves out time in his busy schedule to help tutor him. His plain white bedsheets are replaced with red ones. His childhood toys, his father’s journal, his mother’s clarinet, and the photo album find homes on the shelves next to a growing series of books.

In its pot, his jade plant grows, pale leaf on dark soil, stretching up.

* * *

“Keith! It’s the big day!”

Saturday.

Exam time.

Keith shucks off his cherry red comforter in a sudden frenzy of anxiety. The morning passes by faster than it should. He brushes his teeth too quickly. Breakfast, despite the roiling in his gut, goes down in five minutes: eggs, oatmeal, half a cup of orange juice slammed back hypersonic. They’re out the door and it feels like Keith’s nerves have nerves and those nerves just got struck by lightning.

Mr. Shirogane reads his wide eyes and mute state, and pats him on the back comfortingly. Keith is grateful because it’s the thought that counts, but he doesn’t feel that comforted.

He licks the hard edge of his teeth and stuffs his hands in his pockets.

The drive to the Garrison, on the other hand, feels like it takes ages. Every minute that passes in their SUV feels more like an hour. Keith takes out the music one more time, ghosting his fingers over an imaginary keyboard. Re-reads a thick binder full of important notes. His hands feel sweaty and kind of gross; he wipes them on his pants and tries, via osmosis, to physically make the music sink into his skin.

When they finally reach the school, Keith has to gawk a little. The building is a modern contraption, huge glass windows and right angles backed with bright wood and bright lights. Mom is undaunted; she calmly steers him with a single hand on his shoulder through the office, Dad occasionally patting his head. Takashi gives him one last noogie, breaking his anxiety-ridden stupor, before nudging him towards the student guide. Her blonde ponytail bounces as she leads her group of kids into the building.

They hold the written exam on the second floor, in what looks like a lecture hall with long rows of desks that stack up in tiers and shiny glass-and-metal chairs, building up in a semicircle. It is possibly _the_ fanciest place Keith has been to in his life, or at least the fanciest place he’s ever sat down and done a test in. There are lots of other kids crammed in — except they’re not crammed at all with the huge room. Keith feels his stomach butterfly until they get the go-to to flip the exam sheet over, which — actually, it’s easier than he expected. He finishes the language portion with fifteen minutes to spare, and the math portion with thirty.

Academics is fine. Easy. Keith has it, he realizes, when he’s done the last questions and turns to stick figures to calm the pounding between his ears at the thought of the next part of the exam. Twenty more minutes left of the academic portion. Then an hour wait, and there’s the _practical._

The exam supervisors give all the kids granola bars and a drink of their choice after all the tests are collected. Keith swigs his water, sits himself in his fancy chair for twenty minutes, does not even look at the granola bar because his stomach is already doing gymnastics, and then decides that he has the go the bathroom, because no way that’s happening during his practical. That done, he sits in his fancy chair some more. They call out names, going down the list in alphabetical order. For a tiny instant, he regrets keeping his given surname instead of taking Shirogane. Yu is a long wait down the line.

Finally, the supervisor calls his name.

Keith gets lead to a fairly simple room — carpeted, big windows on the side, the scale of it small in comparison to the massive lecture hall he’d just exited, but still big. A piano sits off-center, black and white and perfect and terrifying. There’s a woman in a sleek chair with an iPad in hand — his examiner.

She has bright eyes and grey hair pulled into a pretty bun. “Mr. Yu, correct?”

She smiles at him.

“Y-yes.” He stands stiffly, too anxious to even fidget.

“You’re applying for intermediate piano, as well as the Oriande Scholarship?”

“That’s — yes.”

She hasn’t stopped smiling. Keith can’t read it, but Keith is kind of bad at reading people. It’s a Mona Lisa smile.

“I trust that you already know how the exam is structured. Please seat yourself and play an A major formula scale, staccato, whenever you are ready.”

He walks over to the piano and seats himself.

The piano is not facing the examiner. It’s facing the windows overlooking downtown Toronto, a field of grey building and blue glass and brightly dressed pedestrians. For a brief moment he wonders if this design feature is purposefully intentional. If you can’t see the examiner… you also can’t tell how badly you’ve messed up? He sneaks a glance behind him. The woman taps her tablet.

He’s got this.

Keith takes in a breath that shudders between his teeth, and wipes his hands against his pants. He flexes them. He’s got this.

The piano seat is a little stiffer than he’s used to. He shifts, lets his feet reach the pedals of the piano. It’s fine. It’ll do. He sets his hands on the keys, and that — that’s familiar, at least. White and black and hard like a shell, cool like the mother-of-pearl in Mom’s hair combs.

He’s got this. He’s literally digested that sheet music, in all the ways it can be digested without physically eating it. It’s been converted to muscle memory by now.

Keith swallows, steels his nerves, and plays.

He chooses to do the scales first for a reason; they’re like a nice, repetitive warm-up. Despite the nerves fluttering in his stomach, he feels his shoulders relax (when did they tense?) and his wrists loosen. The examiner calls out the next sets: “C diminished scale, arpeggiated, legato.” “B-flat dominant seventh chords, blocked and staccato.” “E major formula scale, legato, with the standard one-four-five-five-one cadenza.”

It is literally muscle memory, and Keith knows it, Keith knows it in his bones and more importantly in his fingers. He doesn’t need to think. The music is in his head and his fingers know the position of the keys, and it goes through him in a river, an electric current. He makes sure to give it a little flow, a little expression, just as Mr. Alfor recommended.

Finally, the technical is done.

“Now we are moving on to the repertoire section.” The examiner’s face betrays nothing of his performance. “No need to introduce the pieces; I have the list and order right here. Please begin when you are ready.” She taps her iPad again.

The repertoire, he knows, is the part of the exam that he has to _ace._ Anyone with enough discipline can master the technical aspect. But not everyone knows how to train their ears and shape the sound.

This is where he has to shine.

He begins the first piece. It’s an energetic Chopin polonaise, with big octaves and bright notes set against a steady dancing beat. He follows the shadow of the song playing in his head, feeling out the right sounds. The indescribable _pull_ of the song holds his concentration hostage as he plays through complicated skeins of notes, leading the music through all its delicate decorations and rich chords until the fantastic end. He’s a little breathless by the end of it, but his back is straight and his head is high. He plays the next one.

The second piece is a quiet Tchaikovsky nocturne, moving between a lilting, tugging melody and a slight marching energy. Tchaikovsky is one of his favorite composers for a reason, he muses as his fingers flow. He’s almost forgotten that the exam is going on, at this point; the music pours out of him like water, swaying like the moving bamboo fountain that Dad had installed in the garden. By the time he’s done, the anxiety of the day feels like it dissipated, somewhere into a moonlit sky. He feels peaceful.

His last piece is a personal favourite. It’s Johnny Morris’ jazz arrangement of _Embraceable You,_ and even if it isn’t as difficult as some of the pieces he played, it was so nice that he couldn’t resist choosing it. The chords, the song, it fills him up, growing heady flowers and bright sunsets under his sternum until the music tapers off into nothing.

He finishes.

And then he very carefully does not whip around to look at the examiner.

She’s writing something on the iPad, legs crossed one over the other. When she lets the stylus magnetize itself onto the side of the tablet and finally glances up, she’s smiling again, that same Mona Lisa smile.

“Very good,” she says.

Keith’s stomach retreats from his esophagus back to where a stomach is supposed to be.

She follows it up with: “How long have you been playing piano?”

Ah, the questions section. They’d said something about that in the package. “Um, just a bit over a year,” says Keith, sweating again. “I started summer break of last year, so… yeah,” he finishes lamely.

“Is piano your first instrument?”

“No. Yes? Recorder, although I don’t really think recorder counts?”

Her pen makes a note.

“What made you decide to play piano, Keith?”

It’s a basic question. All of the examiner’s questions are — basic. But this isn’t one Keith really knows how to answer.

He’d seen it in the living room and it’d looked cool, maybe. And before that — his father singing, his mother’s clarinet, that one day with the remnants of them almost shed like oil skin where he’d asked his new family: “can I play it?” And that had been a moment, maybe, but he’d meant it as a hobby, something small, for fun, not something he would be entering a prestigious academy for.

To be honest it isn’t something that _Keith_ decided. That privilege belongs to Mom, after another day spent practicing till his back hurt and not realizing, asking him: “would you like lessons, Keith?” And it belongs to Shiro, who first taught him the basics, and who got him all the books and all the study materials and shouted about genius and “here’s the next Mozart!” through the house every time Keith hit a song just right. It belongs with Dad’s steady hand at his back, nudging him to eat dinner and take breaks before he stressed his wrists. And it belongs in his mother’s clarinet, his father’s singing, the ghost of their memory. All these little pieces in conjunction that make up, in retrospect, more of Keith’s life than he knows what to do with. It’s a lot of little things. It’s one huge, terrible thing. It’s private and precious and he doesn’t know how to express it and even if he could he wouldn’t to this examiner with her Mona Lisa smile, and crap, is there a time limit for answers?

“Um,” says Keith, and doesn’t manage anything else.

The examiner takes pity on him and moves on. “Which famous musicians to you admire?”

His response is much more immediate. “Tchaikovsky, Oscar Peterson, John Coltrane, Beethoven, Chopin, I really like Bach’s chorales—”

“Very informed,” says the examiner, in which case Keith shuts up. Oops. Overcompensation much. “Why do you like them?”

“Different reasons, but they all _understand_ the music. Tchaikovsky was an incredible composer. Peterson and Coltrane had such a good sense of _groove_ and rhythm, Beethoven was — well, _Beethoven_ — I don’t — I don’t think there’s an easy answer? But they all know how to pull the story out of whatever they did. They all know how to get to that — human centre? I don’t know. That feeling in your gut, or whatever.” Keith should really stop rambling. Jeez. He’s going to fail himself for going over the time limit because he couldn’t shut up about his favorite composers.

“Have you ever accompanied performers, be it individual performers, dancers, or theatrical productions?”

“N-no, not really…” Playing music for Takashi to practice to doesn’t really count, he’s guessing.

She scribbles something else down. “And why do you think you deserve the scholarship, Mr. Yu?”

Uh.

Shit.

“…Someone important to me told me that my music deserves to be heard. And — and I want to get better. To learn more. I have so far left to go,” and suddenly the words come out easier, “I still want to learn how to improvise better, and how to compose. Music feels right. And I want to make Mom and Dad proud, and do this without making them pay. They’ve. They’ve done a lot for me. So I guess it’s less deserving and more — I need to try. I think. For the people I love, and also myself,” he mumbles.

She writes down one more thing, closes her notes, and looks up at him. There’s a warm twinkle in her eyes. “Thank you for your performance, Mr. Yu. We will get back to you between four to eight weeks from this date.”

He gets his acceptance letter and the scholarship a month later. His stupid big brother won’t stop screaming until Keith calls him _Bakashi_ for the first time, and then Mom has to stop Takashi from tickling Keith to death in revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kkachi: uhhhhh hahahahaha long time no see everybody!  
> Cyan: HI GUYS.  
> kkachi: sorry for dying on you for like a month.  
> Cyan: but we’re back now… with an interlude.  
> kkachi: keithy boy is so happy! everything’s so nice! please tell us if we made you cry. we writers take sadistic pleasure from hearing about our readers’ tears.  
> Cyan: Keith it’s going to be okay. That’s only partially a lie.  
> kkachi: :))))))))))))))))))))))))))  
> Cyan: IN ANY CASE, ENJOY THE CHAPTER GUYS. THE NEXT PART OF THIS INTERLUDE WILL BE COMING… Hopefully shortly. Maybe.  
> kkachi: haha. ha. ha.  
> Cyan: Leave a kudos or a comment on your way out guys, and thank you for reading Best Foot Forward!


	6. Entracte I, Scene II

His first day at the Garrison, Keith is vibrating from nerves.

The building is no less intimidating as the day of the exam. It looms, shiny steel monochrome and glinting glass. It looks nothing like Keith’s old schools, with their shitty graffiti and old rain-worn brick, and the grass fields sheared to an inch of their life. The Garrison is positioned in the middle of the downtown core, right next to all the tall, gleaming glass condominiums and dozen of crammed together shops. Space is a premium here; the Garrison has a lot of it.

He finds his name on the list right inside the foyer, with his homeroom printed in bold caps right next to it. A senior student volunteer hands him a map of the school. It’s big enough that it’s two sheets stapled together, both double-sided. There’s at least three auditoriums and more music rooms than any other school he’s seen.

He eventually locates homeroom 9R and works up the courage to walk in, clutching at his backpack strap. Casting his eyes about, he picks out a random seat to the back side, as far from the other students as he can manage. He sits down and immediately takes out his earbuds, but waffles a bit. Do they let you listen to music in high school, or do they confiscate your stuff? He eventually just gives up and pulls out a book, hoping that the other kids take it as “do not disturb”. They’re all quietly chatting on the other side of the room, easy smiles and open shoulders.

There are course introductions, and then the homeroom teacher takes them on a tour around the school to find their assigned lockers. There are… a lot of lockers. The lockers are as shiny as every other surface in the Garrison. There’s just a lot of _everything._

The rest of the day follows that example: five minutes bumbling around just to find the next class, even with the map and the occasional pointer from an upperclassmen, which is annoying, since usually Keith's sense of direction is great.

He gets three introductory course packages, makes sure his binders are in order, and then finally, in the last class of the day, finds his assigned music classroom after ten minutes and four flights of stairs. It’s big — an auditorium, nearly. The ceiling is high and curved.

Some twenty-five kids are already in the auditorium, sitting in a neat cluster at the front where a teacher has a music stand acting as a table for her stack of binders. Considering the prestigiousness of the Garrison that’s… more kids than Keith was expecting, but this _is_ general piano studies. Not specialized; that comes in the senior years.

He hauls ass and takes a seat, a few spaces left from the nearest kid in the front row.  

The bell rings, again, a low, percussive noise. The teacher — a thin, tall woman with an open face and a spill of long dark hair — grins.

“Hello everyone! My name is Professor Trigel, and I’ll be instructing you for this semester’s music classes. To start off, though, we need to know each other. Music is all about connections. Please say your name and a fact about yourself.”

When it gets to his turn, he has no idea what to say. “Uh.” he mumbles. “My name’s Keith. I like... the colour red?”

“Sorry, could you repeat that?” His teacher smiles at him.

“My name’s Keith and I like red. Uh, the colour.”

Someone in the row behind him snickers.

_Self mortification, thy name is Keith._

“Thank you, Keith. Next?”

Twenty five introductions later — and thankfully, there was at least one kid who did just as socially terribly as Keith — Professor Trigel hands out the fourth and final outline sheet, does a rundown of class expectations and the future curriculum, as well as an explanation on how music extracurriculars work at the Garrison, before sending them to their lockers. There’s no homework assigned for music, which is good. Keith already has a math sheet to work through and a short reading for English.

When he finally boards the yellow school bus, he sits in the seat closest to the bus driver and puts in his earbuds, hoping that nobody tries to talk to him. He feels like if he tries to actually communicate, he’ll barf his nerves out instead of anything coherent. And he’s not exactly an expert in friend-making.

The day wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. At least he didn’t trip on the front steps or whatever.

Keith gets bombarded by questions the moment he steps back home, Mom and Dad doing that hovering-not-hovering thing he’s gotten used to, asking questions over a dinner of flank steak and rice. “It was fine,” says Keith, shoving food into his mouth. “It was… school. A really, really fancy school— and the pianos there look awesome.” This is as far as his extrapolation goes though. The first day didn’t exactly give him a whole lot to extrapolate _on._

After dinner, Takashi calls. His dumb ballet ass is actually somewhere in Western Europe on tour, and Keith rolls his eyes because Takashi, unlike his parents, isn’t even trying to pretend not to hover. “My widdle Keith!” he cries first thing over the connection, and Keith wonders if it is possible to physically punch someone over eight hundred miles away, “How did your first venture into the big bad bear’s—”

“Oh my God,” says Keith, “I am going to hang the hell up. _Takashi.”_

Takashi’s tone becomes marginally less shit-eating. “Okay, okay, geez, can’t get a joke in these days. So how’s my babiest of baby brothers doing? Did everything go okay?”

Keith rolls his eyes even harder, though he knows Takashi won’t be able to see him.

“I’m your only baby brother, Takashi. And it was pretty normal, all things considered. We didn’t really do anything interesting. It’s just big and fancy. And has a lot of music rooms.”

“Wow, what a surprise. A _music school_ having lots of _music rooms.”_

Keith groans. “Shut uuuuuuuup, you dumba—”

 _“Keith,”_ he hears Mom say.

“—aaaayyyy. Dummy. Yeah. That’s what I was going to say.”

Takashi isn’t even trying to hold in his laughter.

It’s a good day.

* * *

 

The next day of school proves to him just why it’s such an acclaimed institution.

Music class is fourth period. Professor Trigel, two minutes after Keith walks into class, cheerfully announces that everyone is going to be playing a short clip from a song of their choice — _in front of the entire class._

“Consider it a second audition!” she says cheerfully. “I have your notes of course, but there’s no better way to gauge your skill level than a live rehearsal.” She grins. “And this way, you can see exactly how well you’re doing in comparison to the rest of the class. Any volunteers?”

There’s about five seconds of awkward quiet as Professor Trigel regards around twenty five suddenly frozen students. Something about her gaze is especially piercing. “No takers?” she starts. “Well then—”

“—I’ll go,” says Keith, before his brain can catch up to his mouth. He immediately regrets his words. _What the heck am I doing. Oh God. What. Why. No. Why did I say that._ He feels like he’s about to throw up.

“Great!” says Professor Trigel,. “Care to tell us what you’ll be playing?”

“Um.” He frantically wracks his brain for his best piece. “Uh.”

“Why’d you even volunteer if you don’t know what to play?” snarks some kid to his right.

Keith bristles. As always, his big fat mouth opens up before he even thinks. “Whatever! It’s not like you volunteered.” Which is, situationally, actually the best insult, because the kid goes _red_. Keith ignores him, pushes himself off his seat, and resolutely makes his way to the piano bench, nerves suddenly forgotten in his anger. His fingers twitch. He breathes in, steady through the nose. He’s going to prove himself if it kills him. To do that he’s gotta play —

Something unexpected. Something that will shock them.

He tilts his head. Soft, pastel shimmers, night skies, moons. Water. Claude Debussy, French composer. One of Mr. Alfor’s favorites.

Falling from his hands like raindrops on a midnight mirror, the first notes of Debussy’s _Clair de lune_ ring out.

It begins like a lullaby; some soft, pale notes on a dark night, calling gently. The room falls silent as he plays, and it’s like the space itself goes a little darker, swimming with moonlight-blue shades, pulling everyone in. He starts to bring them past the introduction when Professor Trigel makes a sharp cutting motion. He stops immediately.

“Well played, well played, Mr. Yu. I can see you definitely have an intuitive grasp of how to shape a song dynamically, and your technical abilities are quite refined for someone of your training and age.” She steps across the room, the heels of her flats clacking against the wooden flooring. “However, you must loosen your rhythmic interpretation, and you fail to bring out some of the more delicate parts of the song.” She comes forward, setting her own hands on the keyboard to guide him through a plethora of errors that he never even saw. And when she plays out the songs with her corrections, suddenly the flow of music becomes so much more apparent; he can feel the transformation deep in his marrow.

Nobody is laughing. They heard him and they knew he was good, but seeing Professor Trigel unflinchingly pierce through to every flaw in his performance is deeply sobering. And it happens with the next kid, and the next kid, and the next kid, until all of them have been carved to the bone with the knowledge of their ignorance.

At the end of the day, Professor Trigel addresses them all. “You are all wonderful, talented musicians,” she says with warmth and pride. “You demonstrated some of the most promising ability that I have had the privilege of witnessing in a while. However!” She folds her hands behind her and paces. “You must not forget the lessons I have taught you today. You have far to go and much to learn. And this is something you will have to do for the rest of your careers as musicians: you will never stop learning. There is never an end to the curve you take to perfection. You must be willing to tirelessly throw yourself against the whetstone until you are sharp. Or, should I say, _in tune.”_ She smiles at her small pun, but clearly expects nobody to laugh. “Today is the first day in your journey here. Remember this lesson and heed it wisely. You are now dismissed.”

* * *

 

The first thing Keith does once he gets home is beeline towards the piano and practice. The need to do so is like an electric wire stuck down his back, Professor Trigel’s speech still echoing on loop in his head. _You have far to go and much to learn. You will never stop learning. Remember this lesson and heed it wisely._

He loses time until Mom calls him to dinner, where Keith reluctantly pries himself off the piano bench to wash his hands and eat. This time, when they ask about school, he says, “Hard. It’s going to be — hard.” He smiles, and it’s a little bit like his teeth are bloody after a fistfight. “But it’s going to be _great.”_

Keith _lives_ for the challenge.

He does his math homework and his English essay review, and then hauls ass back to the piano. Plays until his fingers begin to cramp a little and then catches himself before he can push any further — there’s no point if it’s going to affect his performance in the classroom tomorrow, even if every cell in his body is urging _go go keep going._ It’s an gasoline obsession that just got its first firestarter. Keith watches some Youtube videos instead, reads up a little on theory, and then goes to bed.

For the most part, school is easy.

Keith breezes through the academic portions; it’s just a matter of focusing and then asking questions if he doesn’t get it. The Garrison has good professors for all its subjects, but its advanced curriculum is in music, not maths or sciences. Plus, he’s got great rote memory.

Music, though.

Music is _gruelling._

Keith keeps up, of course. And he does it with a grin on his face and the challenge of it singing a song in his blood, but it’s hard, hard work. Some days he’s so frustrated with himself he doesn’t want to practice at all, and each mistake makes him want to growl and claw at his hair until the dissatisfied, angry coil in his gut goes away.

He has to practice anyway.

It pays off though, in the end. Keith improves, although slowly, and in increments, and in such a way that sometimes he doesn’t even realize it. It’s like struggling up a mountain in the middle of a damn blizzard; trudging one step at a time and blinding white all the way, no real way to measure progress other than the knowledge that his steps have to be taking him _somewhere._

Maybe that somewhere is nowhere. More than occasionally, Keith just stares at his hands and wonders if he’s going in circles.

On what Keith likes to call “Professor Trigel is slowly turning into a sadist” days, she gleefully throws them all at instruments that they’re never touched before in their lives, plunks a beginner’s book in front of them, and watches them suffer. She really seems to be into the notion of making sure none of them get big heads. For that, Keith is grateful. It maintains a sense of perspective among even the most pigheaded of them. The Garrison doesn’t accept people who don’t get it. It’s the minimum sense of commonality that they all share; even if he doesn’t really have friends, there’s a level amount of respect that goes around because they all share that same thread of connection. It still doesn’t change the sheer pain that is trying to eke a sound out of a flute, but he’s surprisingly adept at saxophone.

The days pass in a whirlwind; school, Mom, Dad, Takashi making stupid phone calls, and music: always always music. Keith goes home with theory pinned to his eyelids. His dreams are set to Beethoven and Chopin in the background. He doesn’t make friends, exactly, but that’s fine. He’s happy with what he’s got. He has the best family in the whole wide world and nobody is trying to push him around.

Midterms loom. Keith locks himself into his room and studies his butt off. The English exam is alright; the math he can do in his sleep. Geography is mainly memorization, so it’s easy. He does his music practical knowing he’s practiced four hours every day for the past two and a half weeks. It’s his best, nothing more to it, and afterwards Professor Trigel pulls out a recording of his audition pieces, from the entrance exams, and Keith —

“Oh,” he says.

He can hear the flaws in it. So many. He cringes at the sloppiness of his staccatos, the ham-fisted sforzandos, the way he flubs his rhythm just _slightly._ It’s kind of fucking awful. He surprised that they even let him in in the first place.

“You can hear all your mistakes, can’t you?” she asks kindly. Her eyes are sparkling with amusement. “If you’re able to recognize them, then you’ve learned. You’ve come a far way, Keith.”

And he thinks about the angry boy making threats like walls, and then he thinks about where he stands now. Model student. Working hard every day. Music, written into his bones.

He bows his head.

“Thank you, Professor.”

* * *

 

One Friday evening, Keith finally gets to see Takashi in action. He’s been away for the past two months, kickstarting his ballet career with a globetrotting tour with the Palais des Léons Ballet Company. Their final showing brings them back to Toronto, and their family received tickets through Shiro.

After going to the Garrison for the past few months, the Four Seasons Centre doesn’t intimidate him as much as it would have a year ago. It’s still objectively nice, it’s just not really impressive anymore. He has to wear uncomfortable dress clothes, which sucks, but Mom convinced Dad to let him just wear a dress shirt and pants.

They file into their seats — orchestra level, they really lucked out with the seating — and wait for the show to start. The orchestra is playing absolutely beautiful warmups — how can you sound that good with just a B-flat, _what the fuck_ — and Keith’s a little in love. Dad ruffles his hair while Mom admonishes him for ruining her careful job of gelling back his mane, but he can tell that she’s not really mad. The auditorium falls into a cascading hush as the lights dim and the curtains open.

The beginning is ushered in by a mournful oboe, timed perfectly with the brightening of the stage light. Keith listens more than watches, a strange rapture overcoming him. Live music from an orchestra this good is a luxury. The dancers are already on stage. Each of them are posed in perfect stillness, doll-like. He sees Takashi out at front, dressed in an elaborate tailcoat, hair falling softly into his face. Under other circumstances, maybe he would’ve found Takashi’s getup hilarious, but there’s a stately hold to his posture. He doesn’t look like Keith’s brother anymore; he is Prince Siegfried, elegant and refined.

There is something mesmerizing to it; the crisp preciseness of the dancers’ movements, the way each step falls in place to the music, every twirl and jump and dip and flick of the wrist. The show passes by faster than he expects: it’s surprisingly enjoyable, even when he isn’t watching his brother go up and do crazy jumps. _Seriously,_ Keith thinks while he steps out for intermission, _what the hell convinced people that ballet dudes were weak?_ Takashi could probably punt someone into the sun, his legs are so jacked. And after his own rigorous musical training, Keith can finally appreciate the sheer amount of work Takashi had to put into perfecting his technique.

After the show is done, they meet Takashi backstage. Special familial privileges and all that. It’s a riot of bodies in motion, half discarded costumes, and noise. Keith finds Takashi sitting on a bench at the back, half-encircled by a few other dancers and a willowy woman in a crisp suit Keith doesn’t recognize. He’s changed out of costume into a worn tank top and tights. A plastic water bottle — iced — is pressed to the junction of his neck and shoulder.

Takashi catches sight of them before Mom can bulldoze through the crowd. “Guys! Keith!” His face lights up into a grin. He stands, and says something quiet to his entourage, and then weaves right through the hurrying stage crew to catch all three of them in a bear hug.

“Gross,” Keith mutters, rolling his eyes. But he’s smiling as he says it. “C’mon, shower, man.”

In response, Takashi does his best to noogie Keith’s face into his terrible, sweaty armpit.

Keith rescinds his love. Adoption who? He doesn’t know this guy.

“Is that the first thing you say to me after five months apart?” waxes Takashi.

Keith elbows him in the ribs, choking on the smell of sweat and deodorant while he pries him away from The Pit of Hell. “What do you mean _first thing_ . You’re on speaker phone _every other night.”_

“Face to face.”

“Skype every third night.”

Takashi makes a face. “…Okay, fine, you got me. But I can’t do _this_ over Skype,” he says with a wolfish grin. Keith’s hair gets the ruffle treatment again. He pretends to bite down on the offending hand, canines flashing.

“Gross!”

“Shoulda thought that before you choked me with your armpit stank.”

There’s a sudden _bang_ from the door area. Then, “SHIRO!”

Keith turns just in time to see someone spill an iced coffee all over the security guard posted by the door, and then a guy — brown haired, glasses, 100% nerd — fucking goes skidding across the floor in a face plant.

Keith squints. “What the fuck?”

“Language,” says Mom automatically, but she’s also staring at the guy on the floor.

“What the ffffffff—udge,” says Takashi. Followed by, “…Matt?”

The security guy, looking incredibly irritated, makes a move to haul nerd guy up and presumably, _out_ , but Shiro raises a hand and a quick sheepish smile before crossing the distance between them. Not hard, now that everything in that general area’s stopped to stare. “Matt?” he repeats, crouching.

Nerd guy finally gets his elbows underneath him. His glasses are skewed on his face, and there’s an imprint of the tile on his cheek. “Shiro!” he says. “Holy shit! You were great! Also, haha, funny story how I got here, but please don’t let them kick me out?”

Takashi blinks. Once. Twice. Then the most terrifying, giant, shit-eating grin stretches across his face.

Keith recoils on instinct, alarm bells blaring. He’s been privy to a lot of Takashi’s Biggest Little Shit grins, and this is by far the worst one he’s seen yet.

“Holt?” says Dad, also beginning to grin now. At least Dad’s grins are nice. They remind Keith of basset hounds, kindly wrinkles curling crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. Takashi’s grins are… not like that. And the one currently living on Takashi’s face? Is gaining increasing traction even as he hauls Matt up.

Keith gets the feeling that it’s going to be a long night. And Keith’s feelings are rarely wrong.

* * *

 

It’s a long night.

“And then he was like—” Takashi waves his arms, or flails, more like it. His elbow misses Keith by bare inches and nearly sweeps a plate clean off the table to the floor. “Five minutes, Shiro, we have _five minutes_ before Mr. Denonzio comes back and we’re in detention for the rest of our lives, _hide the evidence_ , so I shove everything under a lab bench, and then it freaking explodes.”

“My eyebrows,” says Matt.

 _“My_ eyebrows,” says Takashi. “Do you know how long it took them to grow back?”

“Uh, yeah? You reminded me about them _every single day._ For two months.”

“But on the plus side, I did learn how to draw killer brows.”

Matt considers this. “Fair.”

Keith has come to the disheartening realization that Matt is just as much of an idiot as Takashi. Possibly more. Definitely more. Actually, the amount of incidents they’ve managed to get into through elementary and middle school kind of make Keith’s rap sheet look like tiny little spark next to a full-blown lab fire. Which is something that actually happened to Matt and Takashi. How were they not in juvie? Or like, at least expelled?

He turns to Mom. “I think,” he says, very slowly, “I understand how you dealt with me so easily.”

She nods back with the eyes of a war veteran.

“Oh yeah,” says Matt, turning to Keith. His eyes are bright and lively behind his glasses, and his grin, after hearing the past half an hour of back-and-forth reminiscing, is really not one that Keith trusts. “After the Matt and Shiro Show anything else is basically like, crackers, although Katie’s giving Mom and Dad a run for their money. Anyways!” He claps his hands together. “Introductions are in order. Keith, is it?”

“Uh, yeah,” says Keith.

Takashi rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay. Introductions. This is Matt, and he’s a dumbass.”

“Takashi, language.”

“Sorry, Mom, but you of all people know it’s true.”

Eventually, this is what Keith gleans:

Matt Holt is Takashi’s childhood friend, first day of first grade onwards, who moved to Quebec at the end of junior high to go to some fancy fast-tracking tech program feeding straight into university. He was from Quebec to begin with, so the biggest part of the change was separating from Takashi and his family. His grandparents housed him while he was there, and now he’s in charge of some program with a long acronym that Keith had already forgot.

“I’m back to see family though,” says Matt, cheerfully. “I’m here a week, and since I’d heard that Shiro was back in town, I thought I’d visit.” He steeples his fingers and rests his chin on it, grinning. “Hey, you guys should come over some time — Keith, you haven’t met Katie yet right?”

Takashi coughs up his tea, and than starts cackling.

Keith eyes him.

“…Do I want to?” he asks warily.

“Holy crap, _yes,”_ says Takashi, still cackling, which translates roughly into _no-but-it’s-happening-anywa_ y _._ This is how, two days later, Keith finds himself cheerfully hauled into a suburban home a ten minute drive away from his house, neat with a blue mailbox and a dark slate roof, to meet an extremely unimpressed twelve year old.

“Oh my God, it’s you two,” she says, rolling her eyes to Matt and Takashi bumping shoulders and snickering and generally drawing one another to heights of childishness unprecedented, and Keith likes her on sight.

Katie Holt is twelve and a genius, and also ingenious, because apparently there’s a difference; the latter tends to give easier way to giant robot wars and also the rewiring of the television every other week. She’s small and sharp eyed and razor-tongued, can sass and backtalk with the best of them — and well, if backtalk doesn’t work, there’s always the wrench. She’s funny and sharp as a razor blade and brilliant. Keith doesn’t think he’s met anyone smarter than her, which is saying something — Keith’s no joke in the academics department himself. But there’s good, and then there’s Katie.

“Pidge,” she tells him, when they’re sitting in the Holt’s backyard with lemonade and a contraption of wiring and copper screws flowing off the porch, watching Takashi and Matt do something with a vial of what might be gasoline. Or balsamic vinegar. And also… gummy bears?

Keith tears his attention away from that disaster in the waiting.

“Call me Pidge. It’s, uh,” and she looks strangely flustered, the first time he’s seen that on her, “a nickname Matt gave me when we were little. ‘Cause I really liked pigeons, for some reason, and — whatever, dude, I think you’re a cool enough person for you to use it.”

Keith blinks, and then — he didn’t know he could blush, but. “That’s — okay, Pidge. Pidge.” He smiles. “I like that name.”

“…Cool,” says Pidge, and the flusterness is wiped in favour of a grin that bares teeth. “Gimme my wrench?”

Pidge is _great._

Keith’s never had a friend before. Or maybe he has. He’s not good with that sort of thing. At least he doesn’t think he’s ever called anyone his friend before, out loud, or vice-versa. There’s Takashi, obviously, but Takashi is Keith’s brother — Pidge is something different. She gives him concise, cuttingly practical advice when he feels the need to whine about his day, plays the meanest Rainbow Road he’s ever seen, and laughs a little like a jackal when she’s feeling mischievous.

As first friend goes, Keith could have definitely done so much worse.

* * *

 

Freshman year flies by. According to Takashi, the course load is always easier than the senior grades, but that doesn’t change the fact that Keith practiced so hard for his music exam that he broke a string. They needed to retune the piano, too, but still. He’s a little afraid of what senior year will be like, if he’s already this intense.

Summer passes by in a blissful haze. Keith’s never had the chance to leave the country before, what with bouncing between houses, but Paraty, Brazil is more than he had ever even fathomed. He didn’t even think he was going to leave Canada for the longest time. His grandparents (he has grandparents now, and isn’t that the craziest thing?) have weathered, old-person skin, but that doesn’t take away from the soft kindness that cradles his cheeks when his grandmother takes his face into her hands, eyes crinkling with soft pride. He’s not ashamed to admit he cried a bit when he had to leave to take the plane back, his grandfather’s firm hand a grounding point on his spine. He thumbs through the photos they took on the trip; he’s never had a need for nostalgia until now, bittersweet hanging on his tongue.

When he’s back in the classroom at the start of September, he finds that music with Professor Trigel is his homeroom, to his quiet delight. The first thing that she does is explain their midterm assignment.

“It’s a long-term type of assessment,” she says, prowling the amphitheatre stage. “You will be studying the works of any composer of your choosing. No limits on instrument, genre, era, etcetera. Yes, you may analyse musical groups — we had a student in the past analyse Earth, Wind, and Fire and it was quite impressive — but your choice must be approved by me. You will either practice or arrange and practice five pieces of this composer’s works. It may not exceed forty-five minutes but cannot go under fifteen. You may be granted extra points if you choose to arrange the piece, but bear in mind that you must be capable of handling the work. Poor arrangements will result in a deduction of points. Any questions?”

After the rush of class, Keith already knows who he’ll pick. He’s been a favorite since Keith started listening to classical music, and even though he’s been holding jazz close to his ear lately, he wants to pay a little homage to him. And maybe Takashi’s performance helped nudge him over the edge in his choice, but in the end what matters is that he has his choice.

“Professor,” he says at her desk, “can I please do Tchaikovsky?”

She looks at him over the rims of her glasses with a little smile. “That’s quite an ambitious choice. I applaud your courage.” She goes on to write down his name on a list, and he goes home to practice.

He practices his music. He even joins the jazz ensemble and lands a role as a pianist. As of yet, he’s still undecided in where he wants to direct his skills, but jazz makes something slot together in his chest. At home, he opens up his school copy of Sibelius, finds complicated and beautiful scores, and begins to arrange his midterm. He goes over to the Holts’, shoots the shit with Pidge, runs through test after test after test. Mom and Dad glow with pride when he brings home his report card. Takashi is a constant 9pm presence over Skype, and then a constant presence when he’s back home. He’s never been more happy.

* * *

 

January is when everything falls apart.

Streetlamps shine softly through the billow of the storm currently attempting to blanket the city in yet another foot of icy slush. In the lobby of the Garrison, Keith has the TCC app open on his phone, although he already knows what it’s going to say. He missed the bus back home after band, and his normal route takes a full forty minutes between stops — and that’s if it isn’t late. Plus about an hour’s commute through the circuitous street to his neighbourhood, and another ten minutes to walk to his house… he won’t be back until seven thirty, eight. And either way, he’ll have to brave it through the cutting wind and freezing rain. Five afternoon up north means the sky’s already bruised purple, and it’ll only darken as the evening goes on. He has a bad feeling about tonight, and Keith’s feelings are rarely wrong.

He opens his phone. Bites his lip. Thumbs Takashi’s contact information.

Three rings, and he picks up. Keith clears his throat.

“Hey, Takashi, I’m really sorry about this, but could you pick me up? I missed my bus, and I don’t want to walk that much in this weather…” he trails off, because there’s already the sound of Takashi rustling into his coat. His voice comes out vowing.

“Say no more. Your knight in ballet tights is coming to your rescue.”

Keith sticks out his tongue, even though Takashi can’t see him. “Loser.”

“No, you.”

“No, you.”

“No, you. Because you can’t drive yet.”

“Fuck off.”

“Love you too,” Takashi sing-songs across the line, and hangs up.

Takashi’s car rolls up to the school entrance twenty minutes later, and Keith scurries through the onslaught outside, gratefully packing himself into the shotgun seat. It’s actually dark now, the sky a dark swathe, and through the veil of the rain and snow the Garrison looks like a smudged crayon drawing, done in black, with smeared yellow windows. Keith’s breath blows condensation into the air; thankfully Takashi has the heater on. He wedges himself, two sweaters and a winter coat included, into the seat belt.

“Drive,” Keith grunts, as the warm air hits him like a blowdryer. It’s glorious.

“Show some appreciation here, baby bro.”

Keith rolls his eyes. Pauses. Smirks. “Well Takaaaa—”

 _“Never mind,”_ says Takashi, and the car pulls out of the parking lot and into the traffic.

The freezing rain is falling thick and the roads aren’t in the best condition, but this far in downtown and they’re well shovelled and salted, at least, helped along by the constant flow of traffic, and the ride is for the most part smooth. Keith dozes a bit in the shotgun seat; between the oven warmth of the car, and the almost hypnotic yellow of the lamplight and tail-lights, it’s hard not to. They pull onto the highway sometime, Keith recognizes, in a vague sort of way.

He isn’t even properly awake when it comes, finally. There’s the stream of red-yellow light and the rumble of the engine, the _slap-slap-slap_ of the windshield wipers, the comforting solidity of Takashi’s presence. The night through the windows gleams black and grey. The road gleams black and wet. And then through the haze a sudden feeling of weightless lurches before Takashi says, “whoa whoa _whoa”_ and Keith blinks himself awake just as in the pitch dark a silver smear of railing appears and —

a terrifying _crunch_ —

pitching sideways upside down no direction sense just over and over and over earth crashing branches falling someone screaming screaming screaming —

glass shattering, hands-face _hurt,_ black night no light _where shit what’s happening_ , cold like a blow, like a slap, snow in his hair and down his _neck_ —

a sudden silence, ringing in Keith’s ears.

Later Keith will tell the officers that he didn’t know how long he was out for, how long Takashi’s right arm was crumpled in the wreckage of the car, how long the frostbite was chewing its way through his brother’s nerves. Right now there’s only him, gradually coming to, the velvet dark of his eyelids vaguely giving away to something colder.

The bottom of a river ravine cradles the wreckage of Takashi’s cheap Kia. Through the spiderwebbing of the window, Keith can make out the solitary ghosts of dead trees wisping towards the sky.

Ice-cold awareness spikes his gut. He wrenches his head towards Takashi and

_screams._

Takashi isn’t moving. His right arm, pinned under metal that looks like aluminum foil after a punch, an insect under glass, contorted and dead. His head lolling, listing. Something dark is smeared on the windshield, up up up, dripping black and smelling rusted even in the subzero air. Keith has a terrifying suspicion of what it is. It is so, so cold in this car.

Takashi isn’t moving.

_“Takashi! Takashi!”_

He fumbles, desperately, for the seatbelt. It might have saved his life. He doesn’t care. His phone — he fishes it out with shaking hands. The world is turning into panicked snapshot pictures, matching the heartbeat thundering in his ears. Numb fingers drop his phone, clattering to the snow-soaked mat on the floor. Breathe. He scrambles. Shoves a finger parallel to Takashi’s lip, under the nose, _no stupid what are you doing check his chest his CHEST,_ shoves a hand onto his chest. Barely breathing. Keith’s next breath comes out shuddering. Scrambles for his phone, ignores the drip drip drip of the terrible liquid inside, the patter of rain outside. His phone is wet. He doesn’t want to know if it’s water or worse. Three numbers: nine one one. He mouths them. His throat is raw.

He doesn’t remember the rest of the night.

He blinks and —

Hospital.

White lights. Antiseptic. The lobby is surprisingly cheerful; there are paintings on the walls. Which hospital: Sunnybrook. Somehow he knows this. Someone must have told him.

In front of him a nurse makes a note on her clipboard. His arm is in the strap of the blood pressure monitor. It squeezes. The pressure is strange, foreign. He blinks.

Sensation comes flooding back.

Keith catalogues:

Numb fingers, bright light, his scarf and sweater clinging wetly to his back. A headache pounding behind his eyes. Mom and Dad crumpled into two chairs, like paper cranes under a boot. The nurse, murmuring a comforting susurrus of information in his ear. The emergency room next to him.

Takashi is not in the lobby.

Takashi is _not okay._

“Takashi,” he says, interrupting the nurse. Mom and Dad startle. “Where is he.”

The nurse looks up sharply. She doesn’t mince words, but she isn’t mean about it. “Emergency room. He’s being operated on right now. We don’t have any updates on his condition yet.” She places a hand on his shoulder, and Keith realizes it’s to steady him.

Keith stares at her. Keith stares at the hand. Keith turns, and the sign over the emergency room glows red.

And the waves of it hit him, quietly. He called Takashi out to pick him up. Because he was _lazy._ Because he didn’t want to go out in the cold even though it was dangerous for driving and Takashi’s always been so accommodating, so nice to him, and his arm is mangled and they were down in that ravine for who knows how long and _why did you think you could find a place where you were safe,_ whispers an insidious snake coiling around his brain. It feels like he’s underwater, everything muddled, everything choking. _Why are you so worthless. I bet Mom and Dad know. If they don’t, you’ll have to tell them anyways. And then. And then —_

Keith places his head in his hands.

He tries not to drown.

* * *

 

He lives the next days in a haze, feeling phantom ice down his neck and seeing phantom blood drip down the ceiling of his vision. The surgery finishes. Takashi is stable. Keith is the furthest thing from stable. The officers take his statements. He desperately does not meet his parents’ eyes. The shame is burning him from inside out.

He does not go to school for the next week.

They transfer Takashi out of the surgery room to ICU. The room is bright-fluorescent lights and linoleum floors, inclining beds set in a U-shape around the room, blocked off with white curtains. There’s so little privacy and Keith hates it, but they can’t afford a private room. The doctors and nurses sit on rotation at paperwork-ridden desks, one eye on the patients. The machines beep softly. The walls are yellow, like soft eggshells, paintings of fruit hanging here and there, a facsimile of comfort that isn’t working, why would it, Takashi’s in that bed so pale and wane with half a dozen IVs and his _arm_ —

Keith sits at that bedside and doesn’t sleep and doesn’t eat and doesn’t _touch_ and hates like he hasn’t in God knows how long. The old anger, the house fire that eats and eats away at his insides until it picks at his bare bones, it’s consuming everything. Only this time it doesn’t burn the world. He’s the only one inside. He hates himself more than he’s ever hated anything in his life.

Eventually, a series of actions take place: they go home. They shower. They change clothes. They pack things for their stay (not a vigil not a vigil). Calls are made. Work is missed. Another week of school is missed.

Takashi does not wake.

Eventually, Keith has to get back to school. The world has gone on spinning. There are murmurs around the school, pitying looks from teachers. For a brief, rain-soaked-miserable moment, he wishes he had a friend to comfort him. Then he fucking hates himself some more, love this pity party, can’t be any more _pathetic_ Yu, when he remembers that he doesn’t fucking _deserve one._

His midterm is an utter failure. He hasn’t practiced. He doesn’t even have the energy or focus to make it into anything like music. Tchaikovsky turns to ash under his fingers. Professor Trigel looks at him with sad, sad eyes, and she takes him aside later to ask if he would rather remove it from his grade. The anger is beginning to swell inside him again. His lungs are bellows. He tells her at some point that he doesn’t care, but he doesn’t remember it. He doesn’t remember a lot of things. He doesn’t remember his homework, his tests, his quizzes. His marks teeter from their place and fall, fall, fall.

Mom and Dad are like ghosts, in a sense: they drift, pale imitations. Dad gives him tight squeezes at home, sometimes, when he’s corporeal enough. Mom falls into busywork; calls the hospital, announces “There’s no change” in a pale pale voice, calls the law firm and the gardening centre and the school and the ballet company. She mechanically makes them sandwiches, packs bags for their visits to the hospital. She calls the Holts, hears them gasp. Signs forms to let them visit Takashi.

Keith hasn’t touched his piano.

* * *

 

The numbness breaks unexpectedly in the hallways, one afternoon.

He’s mechanically collecting his textbooks from his locker, bracing himself for the sparse, pitying looks of his teachers, when he hears:

“Dude, did you hear about the crash?”

“Yo, what? Tell me about it.”

“Some dumbasses went driving. Y’know, that day when there was freezing rain and shit?”

A locker slam. A laugh, like a bicep shrug, callous. “Fuckin’ idiots. Like what kind of stupid motherfucker goes out and is all like, ‘Freezing rain! Great conditions!’ I mean I bet I could drive better than that. Wouldn’t total my car. But still, yo, common _sense.”_

Keith’s lungs are bellows. His hand on his locker door is a vise.

Some more indistinct muttering. “…some ballerina dude, according to the newspaper?”

And he hears: _“Fags.”_

And he hears: “They can never fuckin’ drive, you know?”

And he hears: “Like I said. Idiots.”

Keith’s lungs are bellows, a harsh, heat-filled roar in his ears as he lunges, cracked tile under his feet, his mind blackout rage. When he’s done, blood shows through the cracks in his knuckles like burning embers.

* * *

 

They rescind his scholarship.

Mom and Dad and Trigel all beg for them to keep him, but even he knows that he’s stepped too far out of line with the wrong dickheads. He forgot about all the rich kids whose parents could shell out the big bucks to cultivate their talent, send them to a fancy arts school. Broken noses. Broken wrists. A fractured jaw. All on their precious babies. He barely dodges juvie from the enraged parents. Billy Anderson’s father is a more high-profile lawyer than Mrs. Shirogane could ever hope to be.

Keith is reminded that he is a violent creature. He does not belong in this shining school with its shining instruments. He has never belonged.

His marks are in the shithole. The boys were simpering and innocent in the face of their injuries. The Garrison is not cruel or unreasonable, but they cannot let a scholarship student behave in this manner. They were willing to talk things through, let him retake courses, but this was too far. He will be allowed to collect the credits from the courses he passed. A guidance counsellor will help him transition to his new school. Expulsion will remain on his record.

Takashi still isn’t awake, and he’s just thrown away the best chance that the Shiroganes ever gave him.

He hates himself so deeply that he nearly considers dropping out entirely, but he can’t do that to the Shiroganes. He owes them too much. He closes his eyes, enrols himself in the shitty nearby high school.

He misses Takashi so much it hurts.

* * *

 

A month to (forty five days exactly) is when Takashi finally wakes up.

Keith is there for it. It’s within visitation hours, some wintry afternoon, and his homework is piled on his knees and his pen is somewhere in the vicinity of his hand, and he’s looking at the math equation with the blanked-out stare of someone working by rote formula. The background noise of machinery and nurses in scrubs and other patients has long since become static in his ears, which is how he misses the first few seconds of the monitors going off.

The nurses don’t.

He and the Shiroganes are rushed out of their chairs to make room for three nurses and a doctor. Keith watches from the sidelines, gripping his pen so hard it snaps. He isn’t aware of this. All he sees is: the dark flutter of Takashi’s lashes, the scrunch of his face, movement, the breath he draws in, shuddering, the way he blinks and flinches at the sudden light.

“Whhrr?” he slurs, and he’s talking, he’s alive and awake and talking, and Keith could have wept.

The doctor asks, “Can you tell me your name?” And Takashi blinks, dazed-looking, but says, obligingly enough, “Shirogane Takash—”

The last syllable is discarded with the skyrocket of the heart monitor, and then Takashi’s not dazed at all, like it’s been shocked out of him, all of a sudden, and he’s tense in his bed with huge frightened eyes, voice a gravelly hoarse whisper saying, _“Keith._ What happened to — Keith?”

Keith’s stomach goes up to his throat and plummets down down down.

“Takashi,” he rasps.

Takashi turns his head and —

“Oh, thank God _, thank God.”_

Keith feels himself crumble.

He’d been braced for it: Takashi’s hate. He’d steeled himself. He’d thought it would be okay, that it would be more than enough, more than he fucking _deserved,_ if he were there to see Takashi wake up. If Keith knew that he was alright, that he was going to live, anything else afterwards was justified. They could throw him onto the fucking street and Keith wouldn’t care, as long as Takashi was alright. As long as Keith could see him awake one last time.

He’d been braced for it, Takashi’s hate, except the first thing Takashi says is _“Keith,”_ choking on the word, saying “thank God, thank God,” like it was the greatest relief known to man, like a fucking prayer, like Keith isn’t the one that put him there in his hospital bed, and now he’s reaching up with an arm stuck through with IV fluid, trying to touch Keith’s cheek. And Keith, standing at Takashi’s hospital bed, the Shiroganes clustered by his side, all three of them heart-worn and sick with anxiety, puts his head down into his hands and cries.

* * *

 

Takashi stays in the hospital.

They have to keep him there. He’s been in a coma for months, they have to monitor him. Not only that; he needs to be examined, tested, slowly nudged back into taking in solid, chewed food instead of the tubes he had to be fed with. He has to adjust to the empty space where his right arm was, the chewed-through nerves.

They move him to a rehabilitation centre, eventually, because there’s only so many spaces in the hospital and the centre is better for recovery. Takashi gets his own room there, done in soft taupes, with a window overlooking a garden slowly going green with spring. The nurses bring him meals in plastic trays; there’s a physical therapist.

Keith takes the hour-long bus ride every day after school, checks into the visitor’s log, sits at Takashi’s bed for as long as visitation hours let him. Usually Takashi is awake, reading a book, and they’ll talk and Takashi will joke a little. Sometimes he’s in physical therapy, but Keith always knows the days; the schedule is regulated like that. Sometimes he’s asleep, and Keith just sits, and watches, and folds the corners of whatever dumb shitty homework he has that day, smoothing the paper until it’s worn, counting the even rise of Takashi’s chest.

School fucking sucks. There’s no music program. Nobody fucking gives a shit about music. The teachers are perpetually tired or incompetent. They’re nothing like the vivacious Professor Trigel, or the host of good quality teachers that the Garrison boasted. Keith wouldn’t even try to put together a jazz club even if he was well-liked enough to pull it off.

And he isn’t. He takes a random assortment of the highest-level courses the school offers, zones out in class, listens to music instead and teaches himself from the textbook. He fills his days with visiting Takashi, studying, holing himself up in his room. He still hasn’t touched his piano. His school copy of Sibelius was long since deactivated. He can’t even hear Tchaikovsky without wanting to set something on fire. He —

doesn’t want to think, really, about anything.

Here is a problem: he is quiet in class. He doesn’t say anything, unless a teacher feels especially plucky and calls on him for an answer, in which he’ll give the right one. This somehow makes him a clueless goody-two-shoes.

The principal’s office becomes a familiar sight again. Keith is rarely the worst off.

In the beginning, it’s just half there jeers and whispers, looks that makes the hairs on Keith’s neck rise and the little, burning voice in his head hiss _wreck them_ but Takashi’s waiting for him in that rehabilitation centre and he’ll probably worry if Keith turns up with bruised knuckles and a black eye, and the Shiroganes will be — disappointed, probably, so he doesn’t. He’s used to ignoring things anyway. It’s fine.

And then one of those motherfuckers makes a comment on Takashi and —

Keith does not, in fact, learn from his mistakes.

He hands out two black eyes and a near broken arm, but it’s the regular trouble makers and they don’t even go to a teacher. The next day, though, the jackasses form a pack and ambush him on lunch break, and they get a black eye in before he fucks them up further.

If there’s one thing that Keith will never unlearn, it’s how to be a vicious little bastard.

This lands him in the principal’s office. Mrs. Shirogane is appalled that he did it again. She is disappointed. He knows this. It doesn’t change the fact that it feels like the phantom of a slap, starched collars and Bible study. He is slipping backwards faster than he crawled upwards. The downward descent is easier than the upward ascent.

People refuse to sit near him at lunch. This is fine. Keith vastly prefers it this way. He flashes bloody teeth, curled fists, _leave me alone_ in every inch of his violence. Posturing assholes who think they’re big shit in their muddy pond try to take him, one-on-one, invite him to the sandpit right outside the school fences. He beats them to shit, gets bloody lips for his trouble. Mr. and Mrs. Shirogane stop believing him when he says he tripped.

They get him an anger management counsellor and he fights it the whole way. It’s the most real conversation he’s had with them in the gulf of time since the accident and of course it’s a fucking shouting match. He says that they’re already shelling out money for Takashi’s rehab, the stuff not covered by their healthcare or insurance. He doesn’t say that they shouldn’t be spending anything on a fuckup like him.

They get it for him anyway. He dips his head, takes the gift as what it is. He doesn’t deserve it, but he can at least accept it with grace, hopefully resolve his myriad of fucking issues and give them a son that isn’t —

But is he really their son anymore?

Does he deserve that title?

He swallows answer that sits under his tongue. It settles somewhere painful in his throat, lodging in his chest like a caltrop.

Silver temples, visual memory exercises. Calm and measured and practiced, unlike the overworked school counsellors. The weeks of counselling pass by, he learns a couple lessons, fights less. He tries to strangle the wild ghost under his skin that wants him to set everything on fire.

It doesn’t really work.

* * *

 

“So, how’s the Garrison, Keith?”

The pencil tightens in his grip. It leaves an ugly mark on his half-written English essay. Whatever, it’s a draft anyway.

Takashi cocks his head. “Keith?”

“How’s your book?” asks Keith, which is possibly the lamest misdirection in the history of.

Takashi humours him though. “Boring.” But only for two seconds. “Keith,” slow and drawn, “what’s wrong.”

Keith cannot do this. This is not a conversation he is having. He picks up his binder and his ratty pencil case and removes himself from the room.

He walks back in twenty minutes and half a paragraph later, and apparently he’s forgotten in six months how Takashi latches onto things like a dog on a steak bone, because of fucking course the first thing he says, again, is, “Keith, tell me.”

Keith stays stubbornly silent. He’s good at that.

“Keith.”

He looks at his essay. He flips through the assigned novel, going to the post-its. _Hawthorne utilizes the A within the Scarlet Letter as a representation of…_

“Keith, you’re worrying me.”

_…the juxtaposition of the freedom found in the forest against the social regulation within the town…_

“Baby bro.”

_…social disparity…_

_“Keith.”_

Keith shuts the book with a sharp _snap._ “I’m not _in_ the fucking Garrison anymore, you—” He catches himself before he can breathe anymore burning words on his brother. Guilt pulls his eyes wide. And now Takashi _knows._

The damage is already done. “You’re… you’re not in the Garrison? What about your scholarship?”

And Keith has to tell him. He pulls out the words like pulling out a parasitic worm, inch by agonizing inch.

“It’s gone. I got. Into a fight. And got kicked out.”

Takashi stares at him, and Keith just wants him to _stop._

The entirety of the situation tumbles out, between clenched teeth, and the essay scrunched in Keith’s grip is ruined, no way about it. Takashi just stares at him all the way, and Keith has the sudden but un-acted (he will _never_ act on it) urge to punch him in the face, which he ignores, because he is good at that, and he’s not going to punch _Takashi_ in the face for staring,  even when the stare melts into something softer, something crestfallen and so, so sad, and there’s disappointment there, which Keith knew was coming, which he can fucking take.

What he can’t take is the way Takashi reaches out a hand and says all quiet, all understanding, “ _Keith.”_

He bites his lip hard enough that he feels blood bloom between the cracked skin. It doesn’t stop him from crying like a stupid fucking baby about it.

This is Keith’s life now:

His grades might stay incredible, since the school is so lax and shit he barely has to do anything, but he hasn’t gone a month without getting into a fight. His disciplinary action list is a mile long. His record is covered in as many blood and bruises as he is. The concept of higher education is a gulf he doesn’t even try crossing, even knowing that Mr. and Mrs. Shirogane have a fund pressing against his back in case he ever uses it. Mr. Shirogane tries, in his own dithering-footstep petal-soft way, to give him the kindness that Keith craves so much. But Keith doesn’t deserve a drop of it. They’ve always been too nice to him, and they let a tempest into their own house.

Mrs. Shirogane — she tries her best, to snap Keith out of his spiral. She is constantly trying to pull his shoes off and the bedsheets from under him, but he’s too heavy and big to move now. She’s there in the principal’s office. She tries to get into the bathroom door, when Keith is putting isopropyl alcohol on his cuts and scrapes. She tries to pick the lock. Keith sits against the door.

She tries, she tries. Keith yells, sometimes, asking her to leave him alone. He feels like more of a child than ever. At the very least, nobody invites him to drink or smoke or worse. He’s too scary, a glower pinned to his face more often than not. He’s grateful; if he leaned that way he would fall further than anyone would ever grab him. And despite everything, Keith is not that desperate.

Takashi gets out of the rehabilitation centre just as twelfth grade starts for Keith, picking up pieces of himself. A career in physical ballet is over for him; not with the arm, the muscular atrophy; he browses for courses in instructing instead. He calls his old company, uses his networks like a functioning adult. He lands a good job. Keith can’t stand the sight of his prosthetic for two months straight.

He skips prom, because who gives a fuck. Graduation passes by. Mr. and Mrs. Shirogane still attend for some unfathomable reason. “We’re proud of you,” she murmurs into a hug. He’s too stiff. He should hug her back. He should keep as much distance as possible, because all he’s done to these wonderful people is hurt them.

Takashi picks up the pieces of himself, and then turns to Keith with all the determination of a bulldozer.

Keith has been trying to keep his problems well out Takashi’s life, thank you, he has enough to deal with, but Takashi is not to be deterred, and after the first week of snooping — which Keith does not notice, to his abject terror — is apparently horrified, which makes his fretting ten times worse. He shoves newspaper classifieds and job listings into his face, forces him to crawl through job-hunting sites, recommends word of mouth gigs with puppy eyes, and Keith can just barely force out the mandatory _no_ at that last method.

Eventually, though, the house becomes stifling.

He feels like he can feel Mrs. Shirogane’s sad eyes on him all summer. He hasn’t sent any applications to universities or colleges. He vaguely mumbles something like “gap year” but he isn’t doing anything but festering. Mr. Shirogane comes in, on occasion, to water the jade plant in the room and to try and cheer him up.

So he says, “fuck it”, warms up at his piano, and gets back to work.

In some ways, it’s like coming back to an old friend. In other ways, it’s terrible. He’s lost so much time. But his basics have always been strong. He practices the bare minimum to get the gigs, makes the money, and moves the fuck out before he suffocates in a place that feels like he shouldn’t belong.

He moves into a shared home with sketchy roommates in the cheapest parts near downtown that he can manage. He scrounges together the money to get the cheapest upright that he can manage, because he literally cannot make ends meet without it. And he’s done… what, exactly?

All he’s done is run from a place that’s been kind to him because he can’t keep his shit together. Pidge is the only friend he’s made in his entire life, bar his literal _brother._ All he’s doing is grabbing music gigs — music that’s lost so much of it’s magic and luster — so that he can live on what is essentially paycheck to paycheck. He calls Pidge, Takashi, sometimes, when his room feels claustrophobic. When he can’t breathe.

It’s fine. It’s all fine, except when it’s not, on the days when he’s stuck at 1 a.m. staring at the faded ceiling of his shitty room, when he feels bone-tired and scared, in that small-child way. When he wants _out;_ when he wants to get back to that brief, golden happiness.

But he can’t. He’s trapped in his small, dark room with nowhere to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kkachi: *slides in three months late on a pair of light-up heelys* …yo.
> 
> Cyan: HIIIIII GUYS IT’S BEEN TOO LONG BUT WE ARE BACK
> 
> kkachi: it’s 10k of apology right here. except it’s crushing angst … maybe this doesn’t qualify, considering emotional damages?
> 
> Cyan: In any case, we did write 10k! It was a bit slow going at first, but once the writing stride hit we… managed. Hopefully the next chapter, however long it may be, does not take uh, three months. 
> 
> kkachi: yeah. ahahahaha. *dies of shame*
> 
> Cyan: But it’s okay! Because next chapter, we return to the MAIN STORYLINE. *Jazz hands*
> 
> kkachi: please tell us if you cried or not in the comments. we are both sadists who enjoy hearing about readerly tears immensely. thanks for sticking around, and we hope to see you again soon!


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